This is a phrase that’s thrown around by the SEO industry. So what does it mean, and how is it useful? For search engine spiders, having a lot of content in a site means having a large number of web pages with html text that target keyphrases. For internet users, having a lot of content means having useful information, tools, or offers. For search engine optimization, it is important to have content that satisfies both search engines and users. Having a lot of content for search engines provides ranking opportunities for a range of keyphrases. Having a lot of content for users gets more relevant links to your site from other sites, which is an important factor in all major search engine ranking algorithms.

Not only is it possible for a website’s content to fail a search engine or user or both, but it is almost always the case. Sites often have useful information that is hidden from search engines in images, Flash, or frames that doesn’t need to be hidden in images, Flash, or frames. And sites very often have loads of html text that is filler written by a copywriter that is not useful or doesn’t have keyphrases. Neither of these scenarios is good for SEO.

Good Content For the User

SEOs often only talk about content in terms of html text – this is, after all, what is useful to a search engine spider. This overlooks an important factor in all search engine algorithms: link popularity. It also overlooks the fact that not everything that is useful for an internet user can be visible to a search engine – or even seem important to a search engine because of a search engine’s inability to understand meaning. Useful content is anything that a user thinks is valuable and might recommend to others. This often comes in the form of excellent deals that beat the competition or tools that make certain actions easier. For a company site, these types of content are often much more important than informational content. This is the content that makes a site worth linking to. Non-trivial informative content is not really possible or desirable to provide for a lot of industries because of economic or audience considerations. This is true if useful technical information for an industry is worth too much to provide in a website or if the primary buyer of a product/service doesn’t care about details surrounding the product/service. Some of the best content can be (necessarily) a couple lines long, exist in flash, or be otherwise hidden from a search engine.

Companies developing a new site almost always will put up something pretty that offers descriptions of their products or services with contact information, and call it a day. These companies can expect to do – at best – just as good as their competition. Providing a lot of descriptive information is the status quo – unless your company is well branded or otherwise has some sort of irrational advantage, it won’t be enough.

Companies should work to provide something novel with their site. If a site is going to be valuable it has to provide something valuable.

Good Content for Search Engines

Good content for a search engine is html text with keyphrases. This is almost never good content for a user. Anyone can create some text and throw in a few phrases that are being targeted. Long pieces often don’t use keyphrases, even though they are the most useful resources for those keyphrases. I could write the most useful article in the world about writing good content for search engines, and never use the phrase “content for search engines” once. Search engines are very literal – they use programs to understand what a page or site is about – this will always cause externalities that a copywriter will have to consciously deal with.

When creating content for a site, make sure you are targeting keyphrases in html text. This is especially important to remember if your site’s best content for internet users is hidden from search engines, or won’t stand out to search engines like it will with users (who understand meaning and the importance of certain combinations of words).

Content is King.

Almost all results in search engines are commercial in nature. This is true for all search engines. If a page has ads, is trying to sell something, belongs to a site that is primarily trying to sell something, is a gateway to a site that is trying to sell something – it is a commercial page. This is because commercial sources have money to create a site in the first place and because they are most effective at marketing their content. They know to put in keyphrases and actively seek out links. The phrase “content is king” doesn’t mean that you need to provide something that is non-commercial.

“Content is king” means a site needs to satisfy both search engines and users by providing keyphrase targeted html text on a page that provides something useful to a user. This kind of content will make it easy for search engines to determine what a page is relevant to and will acquire links, improving link popularity and search engine rankings. There are other factors that are important to rankings, but it is always important to provide something that is targeted, catchy, popular, and useful to some extent. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to write a textbook, provide truthful information, or even be particularly interesting to people who are knowledgeable in your industry.