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Is Content really King?
No.
Content is important - you bet it is! I always advise clients to have plenty of keyword-rich content on their sites, especially the home page. You must take care of the on-site basics - titles, meta tags, content, H1 tags, alt tags, properly named URLs and graphics, footer links, deep page contextual links. This especially works for lower tier keywords. Medium to highly competitive search terms need more aggressive methods.
And now we come to the real power behind the throne: Inbound Links and Anchor Text.
This is where PageRank comes in.
Direct quote from Google on PageRank:
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value.
Google also uses the anchor text of those links to determine the content of that page.
PageRank is the trust level Google allocates to a site. The one we see in the toolbar may be outdated, but it’s still a good indication of what Google thinks of the site. The number and quality of incoming links totally determines PageRank.
In summary:
Take care of the basics, and then get down to the real work: search engine optimization focused on link acquisition.
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5 Comments
Interesting, I read this post on Getting Granular, which suggested Google’s algorithm is not as complicated as everyone might think. Then when I read Scott’s post recently it sounded like it definitely must not be the case that Google’s algorithm is as simple as Getting Granular suggested. But you never know. I’m know search engine expert, but I’ve often thought Google probably does a lot of multivariate testing. So the results I see aren’t necessarily the same as the ones they see.
Robert, allinanchor has been a good indicator for a long time - if a site is not lined up through a keyword search with the allinanchor search, it means going through the backlinks with a fine-toothed comb to find the problem.
If content isn’t King it is pretty close. But King without the power of the kingdom isn’t worth much. Content only provides value as other see the great content and then pass on the compliments (either through links or other methods). And you are right other sensible steps need to be taken to highlight good content.
John, I like your analogy. Thanks for your comment.
I have to agree that content is a huge component but quality backlinks is also a major factor when it comes to page rank. Can you recommend any paid directories that provide high quality backlinks?