Is Content Still SEO King?

Does high quality content still matter when your business or site is focusing on social media to build your brand or interact with consumers?  When you have 140 characters on Twitter or a few lines on Facebook, do you still have to worry about crafting your material carefully?  Duane Forrester, Senior Product Manager with Bing’s Webmaster Program, thinks so.  He recently spoke at SMX Seattle, telling a group of attendees, “Never lose sight of the fact that all SEO ranking signals revolve around content of some kind.”

The value of unique, relevant content was highlighted by the Panda update, which penalized scores of sites for either having low quality content or duplicated material.  But it can be difficult to know what to focus on because of the growing demand for social media – and short bursts of information.  But whether you are drafting a new article for your website or a new tweet, the content has to be relevant and solid.  Forrester advised marketers to focus on content quality, which factors into Bing’s results – as it does for Google.

In a recent blog post, Google, too, reiterated the importance of content.  “Our advice for publishers continues to be to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites…”  Rather than focusing on “specific algorithm tweaks,” focus on creating content that your visitors actually want and that which will interest searchers.

According to a Brafton report, 78 percent of marketers feel that content is the key to success for their organizations.  It can be the key for yours as well.