It's not content, it's communication

[rmccarley]

The king of SEO - and web site success in general - is not content.

Nope.

It's communication.

And really when you think about it, we are all communicators. We communicate to the search engines. And then we communicate with the viewer. Along the way we may communicate with other webmasters to request backlinks, trade services or come up with some scheme to get traffic.

And quality content, while essential, is only important because it is yet another way to communicate.

The king is dead!

Long live the new king of SEO and online success: Communication!

I saw a press release that mentioned something around this, the rest of the article was bunk so I didn't post it. But this was a great point. It's a change in mindset and phillosophy.

How do you communicate your site to the SEs?
How do you communicate it's value to partners?
How do you communicate it's value to sites that can promote it (like social bookmarking sites)?
How do you communicate with the viewers that it's there?
How do you communicate what action(s) you want them to take?

These are the core questions we should be asking ourselves if we aren't already.

MHO

[AltherrWeb]

How do you communicate your site to the SEs? By writing quality content that they can spider and rank for the relevancy of the keywords

How do you communicate it's value to partners? By providing content that is not only unique, but useful to their customers which will make them want to link to you

How do you communicate it's value to sites that can promote it (like social bookmarking sites)? Same as above

How do you communicate with the viewers that it's there? By writing in the content what you want them to read.

How do you communicate what action(s) you want them to take? Tell them, once again, by putting it in the site's content


Content is still king

[rmccarley]

Not if they don't know about it.

Somewhere, you have to communicate with someone to get the word out. Otherwise it's just sitting, dead and useless - no matter how great it is!

This is the chicken or the egg arguement - you say the chicken makes the egg happen, I say without the egg there is no chicken.

[earlpearl]

Content or Communications

Sounds like semantics.

Dave

[AltherrWeb]

Originally Posted by rmccarley

Not if they don't know about it.

Somewhere, you have to communicate with someone to get the word out. Otherwise it's just sitting, dead and useless - no matter how great it is!

This is the chicken or the egg arguement - you say the chicken makes the egg happen, I say without the egg there is no chicken.

But you need the content to get them to want to link to/promote it. It's got to be 50/50

I can promote anything, it doesn't mean it'll stick. The content is what gets people.

While were at it, what came first; the chicken or the egg?

[rmccarley]

The egg.

Evolution, baby!

[toddieg]

ahhh. monday morning philisophical questions....

reminds me of content vs links debate.

in this case the answer IMO is BOTH communication & quality content ... obviously.

[rmccarley]

But which is more important?

[AltherrWeb]

Originally Posted by rmccarley

Evolution, baby!

At least we agree on some things.

The SEO is in charge of the communication and getting people to the site. Do you consider it the job of the SEO to write the content, or at least optimize it and give pointers?

Just trying to look at the argument from a different angle.

[toddieg]

Originally Posted by rmccarley

But which is more important?

oh jeez ... i might have to side w/you on this one.

let me explain my take on it...

yes, quality content is important (obviously)
but communication will get the word OUT & thus the promotion...

examples.
- kevin federline: crappy ass popozao song... absolutely AWFUL content : but because of promotion, he sells his records & thus makes it profitable.

- (can't think of a specific but) a very talented underground band : no promotion/communication and they still strugle selling records.

so: i say communication is NEEDED to be profitable - even if u can communicate crappy content to the masses, at least a FEW will surely like it ... afterall it's a numbers game.