I had a great time presenting to a bunch of Gold Coast business owners last week, on the topic of safe and effective SEO.
One of the challenges I have whenever talking about SEO, is explaining the need for content, which boils down to information, words. It’s a difficult pill to swallow for already time deprived business owners, that now they also need to commit extra time away from the rest of their life to create a continuous stream of information for their websites. The question that always comes back to me is why do they need to do this? So I thought I’d write this post to answer this question.
The answer really comes in understanding what Google is – and also what it is not. What it is not is a directory of business listings and that is where I think the confusion among business owners come from. Traditionally, the only thing that compares with a search engine are the directory books like Yellow Pages, which then evolved into online business directories like Yellow Pages Online. Google and the other search engines are not a bigger, more robust versions of traditional business directories, full of business listings.
What are they then? To understand what they are, you need to look at how they are used. People use them by typing in a search query of any kind, looking for information which answers that search query. The search engine will then arrange all the information it knows about, order it from what it thinks is best (most relevant) answer first down to what it thinks is the least relevant answer. So a search engine is simply a provider of information, of answers, in a way it believes is most useful to the person searching for answers.
Google really has been the example of excellence in the provision of such answers, which is why so many people use Google as the search engine of use.
So bringing this back to the original question, why do you need to create content for your website. The simple answer is Google needs it to answer the questions people are looking for in search queries. Google doesn’t want or need your business listing, what it needs is answers to peoples’ questions about the problems your business solves.
So get to it. Give Google these answers and do it in a way that is more relevant and helpful than the rest of your industry and watch your business listing in Google rise to the top. I know it takes time, but now at least you know why it is required.
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