It’s one thing to have technically sound SEO – a well-optimized site that loads quickly has image SEO in place with alt tags, descriptions, and captions, a sitemap, etc. But, no matter how technically impressive your site is, that alone will not secure high rankings. When it comes to SEO, Quality content will always matter – and websites that have that may even be able to get by with some technical mistakes.
How do we know this? The topic was addressed recently in a Google Webmaster Central Hangout, where a site owner asked for help with improving their ranking.
The site owner said:
“There are zero issues on our website according to Search Console. We’re providing fast performance and great UX [user experience]. I’m not sure what to do to improve rankings.
Google’s John Mueller said that this is a situation that easily happens when you’re so focused on getting the technical issues of your website correct that you lose sight of the bigger picture. Only having everything on your site technically correct doesn’t translate to high rankings – because if it did, everyone would rank – and that’s not how it works. There has to be a differentiating factor – and that’s where the content writing and its quality comes in to separate the cream of the crop.
What’s on your site must still be relevant to users. Yes, it’s always important to fix your technical issues, but if the content on your site isn’t useful to people, you’re not meeting the other big piece of what Google considers when they determine a website’s rank.
If you’re not sure about how you can improve your website’s content, always consider the issues your users may be facing, and questions they may be asking. Then create content that addresses those issues and answers their questions.
You can also ask for feedback from other site owners and people who specialize in SEO, as long as you remain open to the input.
It’s important to remember that you may have more competition just because of the niche you’re in – some are more saturated than others. And this means if you have a technically well-optimized website full of great content, you may still struggle with getting ahead of the competition that’s been doing it longer.
