0 Great Content is Better Than SEO

Great Content is Better Than SEO

Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, recently addressed in one of his most recent videos the value of content over search engine optimization.

According to Cutts, you can have great content on your site and be completely lacking in good SEO, yet your site still could rank well on Google.

Ali Husayni, CEO of Master Google and our resident SEO expert, agrees.
“Great content will attract inbound links by its nature, and sites that constantly write great content attract visitors and Google spiders as well,” Ali says. “Google ranks old and new pages of these sites above their competitors – thus removing the need for out-of-the-box or black hat SEO.”

That’s what Cutts is referring to, he says. Being an SEO expert is not mutually exclusive of being great at content development. A person can possess a great deal of knowledge about all of the little SEO nuances that help optimize a site and make it friendly for Google spiders. But a Google spider isn’t going to purchase your product or service. You need human traffic to come to your site. And once they visit your site, you have to give them a reason to stay and to make a buying decision.

Typically, that is done by providing useful information—good content. Good content is original and relevant. It answers a question, addresses a need and paints you as a subject matter expert.

So while we obviously are big believers in SEO, we also are squarely in Cutts’ corner regarding content. We view SEO and content as being complimentary to one another. That is evident when you consider the makeup of our SEO team here at Master Google, nearly half of which is comprised of expert copywriters.
“Great content also needs great SEO to get ranked better,” Husayni says.

Being aware of what people’s interests are plays hand-in-hand with writing great content. For example, if you run a shoe manufacturing facility, but you’re unaware of what styles of shoes customers want, you will lose your business to your market-aware competitor. Whether SEO helps our writers understand what to write, or how to write it in a fashion that gets the content indexed, one thing is for certain: it helps people find that great content.