Does your Content have Purpose?
Posted by Beth Hrusch on Tue, Jun 29, 2010
SEO content has a lot of little worker bees out there, steadily producing paragraph after paragraph of sales copy, some of it quite good, some not. Day after day, week after week, the Internet is flooded with new information, all of it trying desperately to make their sites rank better. The consumer is asked to “please read me!” a thousand times a day.
Which is why it’s so hard to get people’s attention. There’s no magic bullet for this problem. In fact, I was just talking to one of our resellers today about how the heck do you get your content to rank better for certain keywords. What’s the answer?
There’s probably way more than one answer. Some keywords are quite competitive, blogs take time to develop, etc. But, I do know that this is not an overnight process (unless your content achieves the Holy Grail of SEO—viral status). For most of us, though, it’s a slog. It’s relationship-building over time. The question you need to ask yourself is, does your content have purpose. If so, what is it? Exactly what are you trying to achieve with it?
If your answer is “Why, to rank, of course!”, I would like to caution you. Ranking is an end result of naturally well-written and useful content, promoted well and updated frequently. It should not be the purpose of your content in and of itself. The purpose of your content should be to educate, entertain, inform, engage, etc. Not sell, not rank.
Valeria Maltoni once said that “Education, entertainment, and engagement lead to purchase. Only if they bring the reader along.” Fair enough. So, what are you doing with your content to help your readers deal with their challenges and seek out more of your advice? What are you doing to bring your readers along?
The purest purpose for content is to help people answer their questions, solve their problems and show that you know how to help them with these things. If you stick with this formula, your content will rank naturally, based on both search engine and human factors.
If you’re a business owner, start investing in content just as you would any other marketing tool. But, if you’re going to do it, do it right from the beginning. Have the correct mindset. Remember that content is not an end in itself, it's a beginning. When you start a relationship with your customers through content, you'll be able to glean information about what resonates and what doesn't. Content will draw you and your customers to each other naturally.
That is its purpose.