SEO Blog

(Article originally published in WebProNews as part of a ten-part expert article series on SEO. An episode of Webcology on WebmasterRadio.FM also covered points in this article)

Content Is King

Content is king. More than a truism, the phrase is a mantra. Content is the stuff people are looking for on a website. A commitment to developing and deploying great page, document and site content is a commitment to good SEO.

Comprised of the most common site elements, content is the most effective tool SEOs have to work with. Loosely defined as All Things On-Page, the term “content” would include titles, tags, text, in-site links and out-bound links. In some SEO practices, the acronym ATOP is used to refer to the hands-on work environment. (ATOP, i.e.: Mark sends the keyword targets to Jade whose staff works ATOP in the overall SEO effort) Content optimization is where creative art gets mixed into the webmaster science of SEO.

In the SEO process, content optimization describes most of the hands-on work done to make unique documents place well in search engine rankings. For the purposes of search engine optimization; content either exists, has to be created, or both.

Over the past three months, my WebmasterRadio.FM show Webcology and WebProNews have run a joint series of radio shows with corresponding articles on the ten basic steps or stages shared by most effective SEO campaigns. Today, we cover the last section (but certainly not final points) in a round-up article aptly named, “Keeping It Up”.

If the initial object of search engine optimization is to attract website traffic, the long-term objectives are to retain and convert that traffic and new traffic into repeating business. As all analytic webmasters know, the bulk of site traffic tends to come from search engine referrals. Retaining strong search rankings is essential to sustaining strong traffic, increasing sales and thus expanding your business.

Even after a website has established itself with its visitors and has a strong conversion record, search engines will continue to provide the vast majority of all new site traffic. If the SEO has done his or her work properly, blogs, social media and paid-search ads should also be driving new and repeat visitors.

The Encyclopedia Britannica has introduced a program for bloggers and online publishers allowing them to cite and link to full articles. Previously, online publishers were only able to present snippets of Britannica content to their readers due to the 250-year old company’s subscription-based business model that prices EB’s Internet content at $70/year.

The new program, known as Britannica Webshare provides free access to the online version of the world’s largest print Encyclopedia for “… people who publish with some regularity on the Internet, be they bloggers, webmasters, or writers.” When citing a reference from EB, writers can code a link that gives readers access to content from that particular article but not to other pages in the EB site. An embedded widget is also available for participating publishers to use.

The Britannica Webshare program is a smart move forward for EB as it competes for search-user attention against its widely popular but less credible rival, Wikipedia. As noted in a piece by Techcruch’s Michael Arrington, “According to Comscore, for every page viewed on Brittanica.com, 184 pages are viewed on Wikipedia.” Granting online writers access to the highly credible content found within its print and online pages, Encyclopedia Britannica gives writers the ability to cite information with far greater certainty regarding its accuracy and reliability.

Overt the past three months, we have been running a ten part series covering the basic steps in search engine optimization and marketing on our radio show Webcology on WebmasterRadio.fm and WebProNews.com. After twelve weeks (two of which were preempted by conferences), today marks the final episode in the series.

I am very proud of the series and the accomplishment. Our goal was to combine ten 1-hour radio shows with companion articles published in the Expert Article section of WebProNews to flush out the ten major phases of an effective search marketing campaign. To cover such a broad topic, we enlisted the help of some of our friends.

Here are links to each article and radio show in chronological order along with the name of the expert author.

1/ Keyword Research :: Article by Dave Davies :: WebmasterRadio show (Jan. 31, 2008)

2/ Competitor Analysis :: Article by Ross Dunn :: WebmasterRadio Show (Feb. 7, 2008)

3/ Site Structure :: Article by Daryl Quenet :: WebmasterRadio Show (Feb. 14, 2008)

4/ Content Optimization :: Article by Jim Hedger :: WebmasterRadio Show (Feb. 21, 2008)

5/ Link Building :: Article by Debra Mastaler :: WebmasterRadio Show (Mar. 6, 2008)