I think there is a myth that has been spread around the internet that you may have heard.  Ever heard anyone say “Content is King”?  Content is important, but really bad content that is not optimized well will not help you at all!  Content is NOT king.

The reality is that quality matters.  The quality of the content you produce is much more important than the amount of content you create.

The Five Elements of Quality Content

If you are writing content and thinking SEO, then you need to make sure you are covering the basics.  The purpose of this lesson is to provide you the five elements of your content that are most critical to rank success.

Keyword Driven

You have spent a great amount of time researching for quality keywords.  You have found several terms that are relevant to your site, have acceptable levels of competition, significant amount of traffic, and demonstrate commercial intent.  These are golden!  You want to make sure that the content you create reflects the value of these keywords.

You have to make sure you content is written with enough emphasis on your keyword so that search engines think your content is relevant to the keyword.  There are not hard rules on keyword frequency, but there are some generalities.  The most important thing to remember is that the term should be used as much as necessary, and a little as possible.  It needs to be used naturally, not forced.

There are a lot of “black hat” techniques that keyword stuff a page.  The problem is that search engines are getting smarter and are the algorithms are figuring out these stuffing tricks.

The general rule of thumb is to keep your primary keyword to 2% – 5% of your content.  Some post may be more, some less.

Titles and Headlines

You are writing for humans.  You are trying to get people to click on your link instead of the nine other links that Google served.  The Title and Headline of your content are important in getting people to click.

The Title needs to contain your keyword and it should be as close to the beginning of the title as possible.  This helps identify the most important terms for the page.

The purpose of a page headline is to get your reader to read the next sentence.  Your headline should draw your audience into your article.  The headline should be wrapped in an H1 tag.

The best sources of information on writing quality titles and Headlines is Copybloggers series on writing Magnetic Headlines.  I highly recommend you read and use these tips.

Content

The most important attribute for your content is that it MUST be quality.  If you want people to link and share your content, it needs to be worthy of linking and sharing.

Develop a series or tutorial that dives into the details of your specialty.  Answer questions better and more completely than the competition.  Make sure your content is of the highest quality.

Quality over Quantity.

Landing Pages

As you build content on your site, you should begin creating landing pages focused on a specific content area.  These pages that link to your content become foundational to your site.  These pages are the cornerstones.

Content landing pages should be used to collect the best material you have created and house it in a central location.  The benefit is that you are creating highly linkable pages, link-bait.  People will share these pages more redly because they tend to be comprehensive and of high quality.  The link above from Copyblogger is an example of a landing page.

Related Content

As you build your website, you want to make sure that you are created a lot of relevant, frequently-updated content centered around a single topic.  A single theme for all of your content is critical for your site to develop authority with search engines.

If you have a site about model trains, then your site should contain content about model trains and nothing else.  If you begin creating content about model cars and social media and model trains, search engines get confused as to what your site is really about.  This dilutes your authority and therefore your relevancy.

Keep the content on your site relevant to the topic of your site.  Try to limit your subject matter to a single over arching topic or theme.

Quality Content is King

If you will make sure your content is quality and that is focused, you will begin to develop a level of authority from search engines that will result in higher ranking in search results.  Keep focused on your keyword list and make sure your are being relevant.

The Next Step

Now that we know how to create quality content, we need to begin building links.  After all, links are the metric search engines use to determine whether your site is important.  High quality links from highly authoritative sites build the trust level for your site.

P.S.

Did you find this page via Twitter or a link from a friend?

This lesson is one in an e-course on the Basics of SEO. It covers the cornerstones of basic SEO.