“Content is king” is the new mantra of many SEO experts. But is it true?
As with so many things in life in general, and in SEO in particular, the answer is really that it depends.
After all, high quality backlinks are still important when it comes to ranking well in the various search engines’ results.
So without good backlinks it will be difficult (although not impossible) to rank well.
There’s more to life than backlinks
But when they’re ranking web pages, the search engines take into account many things apart from backlinks. And for some of those things, the quality of your content does matter. In fact, it matters a lot.
This is because the user bounce rate, time on site, and number of page views all count when it comes to ranking.
For example, backlinks may get you an initial high ranking in Google or Bing but if everyone who visits your site immediately leaves it due to your low quality content, then your website won’t keep its rankings for too long.
Studies have also shown that longer content tends to rank better. Now this may because longer content naturally takes more time to read, and so users tend to stay on sites with longer articles for longer.
Or maybe Google actually takes into account the length of articles. It’s impossible to say really.
But it does suggest high quality, longer content will rank best.
Rubbish content doesn’t sell
And then you also have to take into account the nature of your website too. If you’re selling things, you’ll obviously want your content to be as highly-converting as possible.
And that means it needs to be high quality sales copy.
Even if you’re adding blog articles for SEO purposes, you’ll still want your content to be high quality and to drive readers to your sales pages.
So, while content may not be the undisputed king when it comes to rankings, it’s nevertheless vitally important that your website contains nothing but quality.