Scott McKelvey Copywriting & Marketing

New Study Confirms that Content Drives SEO Success

It’s hard to believe Bill Gates wrote his famous “Content Is King” essay nearly 20 years ago. Clinton was President, Independence Day ruled the box office, E.R. and Seinfeld ruled prime time TV, Macarena ruled the airwaves, and I was a Jersey Shore radio deejay.

Playing Macarena. Until my ears bled. Pretending I liked it.

My, how times have changed since 1996. For everything except the importance of content.

Mr. Gates said people “must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will” and “those who succeed will propel the Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences and products – a marketplace of content.”

The recent Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Survey Summary Report from Ascend2 , covered in eMarketer , reinforces the prophetic ponderings of the world’s richest man.

Let’s connect the dots and numbers…

The study found that the most important objectives of SEO are to boost search rankings (66 percent), website traffic (58 percent) and lead generation (55 percent).

89 percent of respondents said SEO is somewhat or very successful in achieving these important objectives.

72 percent of respondents said the most effective SEO tactic is relevant content creation.

Yes, it’s fair to say content is still king, especially in the land of search.

Creating relevant content was far and away the most effective SEO tactic, ahead of keyword research (48 percent), frequent website updating (34 percent) and relevant link building (33 percent).

Like Mr. Gates said, people expect to be rewarded with information. Information that educates and helps them decide what product or service to buy and from whom they should buy it. Information that is now valued more by Google’s algorithms than anything else.

By the way, the study found that the most useful metrics for measuring SEO effectiveness are website visitor traffic (54 percent), leads generated (50 percent), visitor conversion rate (47 percent) and keyword search rankings (44 percent).

Content works, but it’s not easy.

Relevant content creation ranked as the second most difficult SEO tactic to execute (48 percent), behind only relevant link building (52 percent) and far ahead of frequent blogging (28 percent) and frequent website updating (28 percent).

Most companies don’t have in-house SEO or content creation expertise, which explains why nearly two thirds of companies outsource at least part of their SEO tactics. 17 percent outsource everything.

Investing in content helps overcome the biggest obstacles to SEO success.

According to the Ascend2 study, here are the top five obstacles to SEO success and how I believe content can help overcome them.

  • Changing search algorithms (40 percent). Valuable, relevant content is algorithm-proof. Google will never penalize great content. The more you invest in content, the less you’ll have to worry about algorithm updates.
  • Budget constraints (38 percent). 71 percent of survey respondents said the effectiveness of their SEO strategies is improving. If companies are getting better at SEO and relevant content creation is the most effective tactic by far, that tells me content is a low-risk, high-reward investment.
  • Managing keywords (34 percent). Not sure what they mean by “managing” keywords, but I do know keywords are becoming less important to SEO. Google is looking for the meaning and value of your content, not individual words, to help search users find answers to questions. Well-written, well-researched content is more valuable than mediocre content with more keywords.
  • Limited internal skills (34 percent). Industry, company and product knowledge – and the ability to type – does not a writer make. Investing in content writing will produce better results and allow you to focus on whatever you do best.
  • Lack of quality content (33 percent). See the comment directly above.

The study found that the sixth biggest obstacle to SEO success is the lack of an effective strategy (31 percent). I think it’s fair to say that a better strategy would also go a long way to leaping over some if not all of these hurdles.

Let’s give props to BGIII and extract common sense from the numbers.

Bill Gates was onto something much more profound than a silly song by Los del Rio. He was onto it long before there were blogs, search engines and social media.

This new study confirms the regal status of content, especially as it relates to SEO.

SEO helps businesses improve search rankings, website traffic and lead generation. Most businesses are getting better at SEO. Content creation is the most effective SEO tactic, but it’s also difficult to execute.

So…

If you’re using SEO as part of marketing strategy – and you want SEO to work – killer content must be part of the equation. If you don’t have in-house talent, content writing is a wise investment.

Unless the numbers are lying. Which they rarely do.

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