We don’t have a boilerplate to follow when consulting clients on SEO.
That’s why we enjoy it so much.
Each client comes to us from a different industry, with different needs, a different knowledge base and varying levels of commitment and strategy.
In return, we come back with custom strategy, instruction and consultation to fit our clients needs.
The other day, we had a meeting with a new client who had experience with AdWords and PPC but lacked experience with SEO.
We started off by explaining that, with AdWords and PPC, dollars (or whatever your unit of money is) is your currency.
It’s easy. You pay money. You get impressions.
With SEO, content is your currency.
What does that mean?
Simple. To dummy SEO down, Google looks at the content of a web page to determine how and what it ranks for. It uses three primary factors to do so: Relevancy, timeliness and quality.
Relevancy is simple. Is the page relevant to the topics of your site? Based on existing content, Google determines the overall topic of your site. For example, ESPN.com would be topical for Sports, NFL, MLB, NBA, etc. So, if ESPN.com publishes a story about the NBA lockout, Google will see the new piece of content as highly relevant. If ESPN.com publishes a story about knitting in a retirement home, Google will not see this as relevant.
Timeliness is simple, too. Google likes fresh content, so back to our ESPN example, if ESPN.com publishes a story about the Packer’s winning last year’s Super Bowl today, Google will not be too impressed. However, if ESPN.com, today, publishes a story about the Packers beating the Falcons last night, then Google will give it value.
Quality is the last one to quantify and explain. We know there are a few hard-fast rules. Google will look at grammar and spelling (although it’s a very rudimentary inspection). Google also will examine word length (400 words or more is the Golden Rule), but after that, quality kind of becomes subjective.
The way we generally try to explain it to clients is that, ideally, they should produce content that people will want to share with others. Let’s face it, Google places the highest weight on that by checking how many other sites link to the content and how many times the content has been shared on sites like Google+, Facebook and Twitter.
So, those three attributes will determine how much your currency is worth. And, just like monetary currency, it’s generally better to have more.
Everyone who is serious about SEO should be producing content on a regular basis and at least twice a week.
Does this mean that every piece of content should be worth a million dollars in SEO currency? No way. That’s impossible. But just like expression “practice makes perfect” doesn’t seem to make sense because we can’t achieve perfection, we should be striving for million-dollar content.
Paying for SEO? Content is currency.
Commentary
We don’t have a boilerplate to follow when consulting clients on SEO.
That’s why we enjoy it so much.
Each client comes to us from a different industry, with different needs, a different knowledge base and varying levels of commitment and strategy.
In return, we come back with custom strategy, instruction and consultation to fit our clients needs.
The other day, we had a meeting with a new client who had experience with AdWords and PPC but lacked experience with SEO.
We started off by explaining that, with AdWords and PPC, dollars (or whatever your unit of money is) is your currency.
It’s easy. You pay money. You get impressions.
With SEO, content is your currency.
What does that mean?
Simple. To dummy SEO down, Google looks at the content of a web page to determine how and what it ranks for. It uses three primary factors to do so: Relevancy, timeliness and quality.
Relevancy is simple. Is the page relevant to the topics of your site? Based on existing content, Google determines the overall topic of your site. For example, ESPN.com would be topical for Sports, NFL, MLB, NBA, etc. So, if ESPN.com publishes a story about the NBA lockout, Google will see the new piece of content as highly relevant. If ESPN.com publishes a story about knitting in a retirement home, Google will not see this as relevant.
Timeliness is simple, too. Google likes fresh content, so back to our ESPN example, if ESPN.com publishes a story about the Packer’s winning last year’s Super Bowl today, Google will not be too impressed. However, if ESPN.com, today, publishes a story about the Packers beating the Falcons last night, then Google will give it value.
Quality is the last one to quantify and explain. We know there are a few hard-fast rules. Google will look at grammar and spelling (although it’s a very rudimentary inspection). Google also will examine word length (400 words or more is the Golden Rule), but after that, quality kind of becomes subjective.
The way we generally try to explain it to clients is that, ideally, they should produce content that people will want to share with others. Let’s face it, Google places the highest weight on that by checking how many other sites link to the content and how many times the content has been shared on sites like Google+, Facebook and Twitter.
So, those three attributes will determine how much your currency is worth. And, just like monetary currency, it’s generally better to have more.
Everyone who is serious about SEO should be producing content on a regular basis and at least twice a week.
Does this mean that every piece of content should be worth a million dollars in SEO currency? No way. That’s impossible. But just like expression “practice makes perfect” doesn’t seem to make sense because we can’t achieve perfection, we should be striving for million-dollar content.