Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Second of Ten Google+ Local Optimization Tips You Can Count On

If you didn't read my post on June 25 here http://googleplaceshelp.blogspot.com/2012/06/top-ten-google-local-optimization-tips.html  you may want to go back and read it.  This was the most important aspect of Optimizing your Google Search Effort in the post Panda, post Google+ Google Places merger.   Now we will look at the second most important element that you should be paying attention to.


2.  Quality content is king on Google.  Don't play games with the Goog.  There will always be opportunities to go the black hat route and try to game the system with useless product, useless blogs, spam, scams, and tricks.  And some of these approaches will actually work FOR A WHILE!  If there is one consistent aspect of my experience with the web and Google search over the past almost two decades, it is this.  You will get great long term results if you abide by the rules of fair play and the stated rules of Google.  And the corollary, you will get slapped or worse if you go black hat.

I recently had a potential client ask me about hiding keywords by making them small, black on black, or way down on the page with no continuity.  I couldn't help laugh.  This was smacked by Google 15 years ago. 

Quality content means that it is meaningful to the individual searcher.  They are Google's customer.  If Google doesn't serve them with fantastic content on page 1in ways that are relevant to the keywords that searchers are using, the entire business model fails.

Quality content therefore means that it is original, useful, and well written.  However, that isn't enough.  The content must still be written with search in mind.  You can have the best restaurant in town, but if you locate it in a remote area with no signage or advertising, you will fail.  You can write a Pulitzer Prize worth article, but if there are no keywords, links in or out, or other signals to Google, it will be just one more among millions of articles that are lost forever.

Some who read this might say, "Randy, this is so fundamental, so common knowledge, so common sense."  Well, if it's so common sense, how come there is so much garbage being written, and so much excellent content residing on page 10.  As a researcher I commonly go 10 or more pages deep looking for the gems, and find them. 

Do you think quality content qualifies as the second most critical aspect of Google search optimization after the big merge between Google Places and Google+ Local

If you don't have anyone in your organization that can write content suitable for Google Search, hire someone who does.  We'd be happy to discuss this with you at 310-910-1848.

1 comment:

Dennis Miedema said...

I think content marketing is THE most important search engine optimization strategy above all else, including the merge of Places and Google+ Local.

It's a shame that there is so much confusion about what works and what doesn't or perhaps better said: it's a shame that some people really think that they have anything to gain by getting people to their spammy sites to try and sell them spammy products that they won't buy.