“Content is King”, “Content Rules the Web”. I’m sure you have heard over and over again how important content is. Surprisingly, it is the “Hush Hush” or “Secret Sauce” to every successful Internet marketing campaign. But why?

It is important to understand exactly how the search engines work. They are readers, plain and simple; they read massive amounts of information 24x7 and try to find the most relevant information they can in order to supply the search user with what they are looking for. Remember, engines see web pages not websites. I went into detail about the importance of your website being ready for traffic in our last newsletter. With that being said, the more relevant the content the easier the search engines can make the connection and users will find your business. If you don’t have enough relevant content, the search engines will not have enough to read and your rankings will slip a bit. Text is the search engine spider’s food. Flash-based websites look great and do lots of COOL stuff but they are not search engine friendly. Search engine spiders cannot read text when it is in an image. You have to feed them with good quality text-based content and over time you will be rewarded with better and faster indexing.

What does this all mean?!?!?

What it doesn’t mean is that you have to fill each page of your website with thousands of words of mindless babble. Make a decision on how much content you need to provide for your users to have a clear picture of what you want them to do/understand/take away from each page. If you have product pages that need content, a hundred to a hundred fifty words will work as guideline. You don’t need to drop a thousand words so the search engines can find you. Think about your user experience. For example if you own a website that sells t-shirts, do you want to have a one thousand word description on your product page? Probably not. I would think your prospective client would rather buy a t-shirt than read your business plan. But if your clients are businesses and you offer technical database solutions to your audience, then a lengthy description of your services and or products might be in order. Think about your clients and step into their shoes. Be sure your message is to the point and relevant.

Stop, take a step back and try to figure out exactly what your potential clients are looking for and what they would want to see on your website. Before you think about what the search engines want to see remember your clients are more important. As important as the search engines are just they are there to display the information in the most relevant fashion. They are a very successful at finding relevant information, so be that source of relevant content.