When Content Isn't King

bytanzanite

322 followers

Updated 5 years ago

We have probably heard the phrase content is king more than once.

It's meant to remind us that you can have a stunningly beautiful-looking website, but without sufficient, high-quality content, that's all it is. A beautiful site that will earn you nothing.

The Google search engines will not give you a better ranking if you have the best-looking site in your niche. Visitors who do manage to reach your site will think it's beautiful, so I guess that's something, but it will earn you very little income in the long run.

Google wants to see websites that have something to offer besides a visually-appealing website. They want you to teach your visitors something. They want you to help visitors' who have questions about the niche you are specializing in.

Google wants you to offer the best, most relevant information in your niche. If you do, they will rank you very high. So high, as a matter of fact that your post is one of the first people see when they seek information about the topic they typed into the Google search bar.

What you want is a clean, well-constructed site that keeps people there when they do arrive.

WHEN CONTENT IS NOT KING

Pounding out page after page of content is not necessarily the highway to success. Having more posts than everyone else does not guarantee you more affiliate success

It's not just words you are creating. They have to be meaningful. Your entire post has to have balance and meaning. Everything from your written words, title, table of contents, links, images, categories, meta tags, and keywords have to come together like a philharmonic orchestra to create beautiful music.

DO YOUR POST HAVE THESE COMPONENTS?

1. Does your title have an attention-grabbing twist?
2. Is there at least one outbound link in your post?
3. Do you have one inbound link in your post?
4. How about a table of contents?
5. Do you have vibrant images that relate to your post?
6. Is your post categorized?
7. Did you fill in the keywords section?
8. Did you go to the bottom of the page and fill in the meta-tag?
9. Were you sure to enter the post as written by you as opposed to Admin?

These might seem like very picky, insignificant details, but doing all these will get the Google -bots attention when they crawl your post and put it under the magnifying glass. If you do all this, I guarantee, they will love what they see.

SO WHAT DO THESE COMPONENTS DO ANYWAY?

(1)The title of your post is one of the first things a person sees when they do a Google search and you pop up as one of the top three or four results. So Let's say it's a senior looking for an electric scooter. One title says Electric Scooters For Seniors. Another says Scooters For Seniors, and one says Electric Scooters For Seniors That Will Blow Your Hair Back. So which one do you think will grab the visitors' attention?

(2)When you write a post, do a Google search on the topic you're writing about. Find a post that will help explain what you wrote about and link to it. This is your outbound link. Say you are writing a travel post on Las Vegas. You could link to another website that has a post titled, The Ten Best Buffets In Las Vegas. Check the box that says open in another page. Google will love you for it. You are showing a real interest in serving your visitors'.

(3)Link to one of your other posts. For instance if you were writing about shoes, you could link to one of your posts about hats. You lead into the other post like this for example. "These are really great walking shoes. Maybe you could use a hat in case it rains." Highlight maybe you could use a hat in case it rains, and link it to your post about hats. This is an inbound link. This shows the Google bots that your website is cohesive and well-organized.

(4)Get yourself a Table of Contents plugin. When you do a heading in your post and use H2 or H3 or H4 to highlight it, it will appear in your TOC like magic on top of your post. If you talk about four different components in your post and use H3 for instance to make each sub-section stand out, it becomes part of the TOC. The TOC is live links that will take visitors' to that part of the post when clicked on. Say you were doing a travel post that includes Italy, England, Germany, and Switzerland and each has their own H3 sub-heading, each one will be in your TOC. So a visitor interested in Switzerland simply clicks on the Switzerland sub-heading in the TOC box and they will be taken to the heading that interests them.

(5)Lines and lines of content are difficult to read. Interspersing vibrant images throughout your post will break up the content. It works best if you go left, right, left, right, instead of having all the images to one side. Be sure to put the title of your post in the alt tag box. Images can also lead to your website. Actually, I tried to do that in this post, but the images were skewing the content for some reason.

(6)Get yourself a category plugin. Your visitors' might be interested in one particular segment of your website. When they click on a category that says Clothes for instance, they will see every single post you entered in the category Clothes.

(7)Take the time to put three or four keywords in the keywords box. Keywords don't have a lot of weight, but if they help even a few people find your site, it's worth taking the time to do it.

(8)For some reason, people don't like filling in the Meta tag box near the bottom of their post page. The Meta tag text is what people see when they search your niche. They will see your amazing title and the Meta tag will give a brief description of your post.

(9)This is a small, but important point. When you go to publish your post, use your name and not admin. It's way more personal to have your name as creator of the post.

IN CONCLUSION

I've self-published 8 books and still, it takes me up to four hours to create a 1100-1500 word post properly with the nine components I listed above.

It makes no sense to me to just write page after page of content while leaving most of the critical search engine components out. They're left out by people because they take time. And OMG! you could start another post instead of paying attention to detail!

The truth is, someone with 75 well-constructed posts could well get more visitors' than someone who writes 400 posts at breakneck speed and leaves out all the important details.

Yes! Content is King, but only if it's formulated properly.

Remember, they're not just words you're writing. You are sharing your wisdom and you want it to reach as many people as possible.