SEO Basics - A Close Look At Content - Part One

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No matter how you look at it: in the last few years, the commoditization of web content has gone on in full force. Sure, you’ll still hear people say “Content is King”, and their miserable hearts are in the right place. But in the world we live in: Oil is King, and Content isn’t even an ugly maiden. Content is an unavoidable need for websites. Without it, you’ll really be screwed. But can your content actually make you the type of money you dream about?

Let’s look at several factors that have turned content into a commodity.

1. Google Adsense - without a doubt, the Google Adsense made web content proliferation explode. Anyone with a computer, an internet account, and an Adsense account could suddenly become a web publisher. And they have. You have people producing content now, at an alarming rate. Of course most of the content isn’t high quality, but such content will still compete with any you produce for the coveted top spots in the search engines.
2. Content Management Systems have improved, and are free. In the past, SEO was a big deal for webmasters because it meant the difference between websites being found or not. It still is, but now it’s built in. Someone who downloads WordPress can expect their pages to be indexed easily. So now there’s much more competition, even in the arena of SEO friendly pages.
3. Content creation is being automated by many. This is the concept of “flooding the market”. Since people can create automated content for no money, a flood of low quality content has hit the internet. This low quality content can be produced at levels that affect the entire search engine index and lower the availability of hand-crafted articles.

Right off the bat we can realize that placing new content on the internet with the hopes of ranking it high enough for people to see it is quite a challenge. But it’s not like we have a choice. We need content because content is what brings in people. Therefore we can’t get upset about how hard it is to rank the content, or how much time it takes to produce. Web publishers really have to analyze content the same way a manufacturer takes a detailed look at the production costs of his product. Content is what we have, so that’s where we begin our focus.

This is the first in a series of articles about SEO Basics. Please sign up for our RSS Feed in order to receive alerts when we update the series.

Full Series on SEO Basics:

Section 1 - Content

1. SEO Basics - Part One - A Close Look at Content
2. SEO Basics - Part Two - Creating Content
3. SEO Basics - Part Three - Content Strategies
4. SEO Basics - Part Four - On Page Optimization

Section 2 - Off Page Factors (Linking)

1. Internal Linking Structure
2. Incoming Links
3. Outgoing Links
4. Acquiring Incoming Links.

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