Not only do users appreciate content (I mean, really, if you think that they don’t, you’ve got another thing coming), but even the search engines have begun looking at content as an important ranking factor. Content is just that important. It’s time these people crawl out of their rock and get with the times.
When it comes to what we know about SEO content, content marketing and the like, we, and those types of people I just mentioned, need to change how we think about content. It is not its own thing, like an add-on, to your site. It’s always connected to it and is an integral part of the user experience.
What is content? It isn’t just the stuff you write to fill your blog, or to rank higher, or to add another longform article to your site. Content could be anything that communicates a message to the audience. It could be product descriptions, the story of your company, even images and videos. If it shows something, then by jove, it’s content that communicates something to the audience.
Ian Lurie, the CEO of the company, Portent, has written a blog post for Moz tha talks about how we need to make sure we treat content as part of the family when it comes to your site and to the user experience instead of that creepy uncle nobody wants anything to do with.
If your curious about what Ian has to say on the matter of content and the user experience, check out his post, It’s Time to Treat Content as Part of the User Experience, on Moz.com on the Moz Blog. Maybe it’ll persuade you to make sure content is better integrated with your site’s user experience. Or perhaps you could use it to help persuade a fellow SEO to get out of the SEO Stone Age and move into the age of reason.
Moz Blog: It’s Time to Treat Content as Part of the User Experience