As you’ll have doubtlessly noted, we talk about content a lot on the Vertical Leap Blog. It might seem curious that one of the key tenets of SEO can basically be boiled down to the phrase “If you write it, they will come”, but more or less, that’s how it is. Google, at its core, is trying to help people to find what they want.
And make enough money to buy their own spaceship.
Ask yourself this; would you go into a bricks and mortar shop if you knew there was nothing in there you wanted to buy? Or a library that only had Dan Brown books? This is what Google is trying to avoid, every time someone sends a search query; these unhappy accidents. They want you to have lower bounce rates as much as you do.
So far, so obvious, right? Well, there have been a couple of recent developments that have thrown this into even greater relief, effecting not just search, but the face of the internet itself and how people are trying to make money off it.
First of all, there’s the widely reported May Day update to the Google search algorithm. One of the greatest benefactors of this seems to have been the sector known as ‘E-Commerce Sites That Have solid, Unique Descriptions Of Their products, With Fresh, Relevant User Generated Content Associated With It.’ The core of this being – if you’re just recycling basic corporate marketing copy, you’re not as useful, and you might well be falling into the trap of using content duplicated across the internet.
I like to compare this to record stores – the best ones aren’t just the ones that have rows after rows of LPs – they’re the ones that have staff recommendations on them, with little descriptions. As is increasingly the case, what’s true In Real Life is true on the internet (watch out Real Life!).
Secondly, as I wrote about the other day, there’s an increasing desire for traditional Main Stream Media sites to buy up content (and audience) from successful blogs. What’s interesting is that these large content providers are moving more and more into the TV model, with them as ‘channels’ purchasing and commissioning new content from ‘producers’; the bloggers, the journalists, the commentators. They then leverage this content to make money in whatever way they see fit – by selling adspace (for ITV or CBS, read theguardian or The Atlantic) or by adopting a subscription model (for HBO and the BBC, read the NYT or the London Times).
Which will win? I suspect it’ll come down to who can attract the best content, and by proxy, the most lucrative (this isn’t necessarily the same as the biggest) audience.
My conclusion is this: it’s worth spending time and money on content. When it comes down to it, that’s the foundation of your business, whether you are trying to sell advertising off page views, clothing by the pound, or spaceships to multinational search based corporations.
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