As I wake up this morning on Jan 20, 2011 to see the ice and snow melt away here in Seattle, I get to check up on some of my research I’ve been doing lately.
I have a great passion for SEO and doing search engine optimization for local companies like Bob’s Property Solutions in Puyallup and Reclaim Credit Consultants out in Federal Way. And so I must be on my game at all times so I can deliver the best results to my clients.
There’s a lot of studies out, and a lot of research out in articles written about SEO and white papers on sites like SEOmoz that research the subject with a zeal of getting the best knowledge about the industry into my hands and yours so we can be a better consultant for our clients. But if I am to be the best I can be, I must also do my own studies and research. Without the bias of the experts like SEOmoz whom I just adore and am a standing Pro member with.
Having a brand new website gave me a great opportunity to see and experiment with Google’s algorithms unlike what someone can do if they had an older website with history and content behind it.
In short, I was able to do a science experiment on my own website prior to building it out or putting any real substance or content on it.
Instead of having a bunch of wording on the site, I had some words in the disclaimer, and one short blog post. That’s it! And the blog post was just a video with a description meta tag that “counted” as the content for the blog page.
So needless to say, the single blog post did not show up in the search engine results pages (SERPs), and the home page barely showed up at all. BUT…
The blog page that had some content from the meta tag describing the content on the page showed up more then anything!
So what does this mean? Content is still King.
Oh… ya… my home page.
I have about 8 testimonial pictures on the home page showing off some Google rankings I’ve gotten for clients and a video client testimonial that’s hosted from YouTube.
Although I was able to get the home page ranked #1 and #2 for various city search terms for SEO, the predominant page that ranked was the /blog page.
Why? Because that was the only page on the entire site that had any unique content. I.e. The Meta Tag Description of the blog post that had no word content at all!
So… Even though your site might have pages with video, or pictures on the site. The number one thing is content. The written word as content.
If you have photos you want to put on your website, put some words down on the page. That will help you out so Google does not mistakenly think of your page as spam. Same thing with video.
Except with video. Probably the best thing to do with video is to take a transcription of the video and put it right on the page so every word of the video is bringing you search engine traffic. Because… from my experiment, content is King over video, photos, and title tags.
Yes, you heard me right! Title Tags!
The content on your page is more important then your title tag. That’s what I have found in my SEO test. So make sure you have words on every page.
I’d like to close this post with an analogy that all search engine optimization experts, and all local business owners should understand.
The links pointing to your website is like gasoline fueling your car. The words on your web page and the SEO in the meta data is the engine just like your car. When you put the fuel into the engine from all the links you build, if there is no substance on your site, the engine will get flooded and stall out.
Make sure you have written content on ever page, and you will do just fine!
One more thing. I’ve noticed that Google is slacking on their duplicate content. Some SEO companies are cheating the system by having multiple pages that say the exact same thing except with a couple of keyword variances to rank for a different city in a different state. Some of these website have thousands and thousands of the same page on their site! And they all get indexed. The only difference is the city and state is different on each page.
Do I recommend this? No. I do not. I believe you can get around doing this by writing good quality content on your website.
If your a local business, you don’t need to have a separate page for each city you do business in. What I recommend instead, is after you service someone in the city you want to rank for, ask for a video testimonial or take some pictures of the job you did, and write a blog post about the experience in that city. Then you can get rankings for that city and the work that you do. Without spamming the internet with duplicate pages.
Here’s an example of what I mean. Here’s Rand Fishkin talking about content and trying to tie together a boring sales message with a SEO social media rank page.
Worth a watch.
Then please comment bellow and let me know what you think of my article, and or what you thought of the video. Thanks For Reading!
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In my personal eixerpence, blog comments are an amazing way to drive traffic to your site. Even though a link in the actually body of the article helps a little more, getting your link in a blog comment is SO much easier. Just be sure to put your links on blogs across the board (aka .org, .com, .gov, etc.). On that note, feel free to add your link to my site . Keep the good articles coming and have a good one!