The Vital Role of Quality Website Content & Updates for Best SEO Results
Do you have SEO services for your website but aren’t getting the level of results you were expecting? It might be time to look at your website content and whether updates could help your SEO.
Website content supports search engine optimization (SEO) by serving as a delivery mechanism for keywords—search terms users enter when looking for information, products, or services in a Google search. But that’s not all. The specific rules governing content quality determine how high websites rank in SERPs (search engine results pages).
Think of content as a bridge connecting the reader to useful information, the answer to a question, the solution to a problem, or even something as simple as a recipe. Without well-written, carefully organized, and informative content based on Google’s E-E-A-T framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) and strategic implementation of keywords, your website won’t appear in search results.
In fact, if you’ve ever searched for a recipe and found a long, seemingly unnecessary story before the actual ingredients and preparation directions, you’ve experienced exactly why content is extremely important for SEO. (That search result you clicked on for that recipe was likely at the top of the page, too.)
Simply launching a website on the internet isn’t enough. In order to rank highly in Google search results and see increases in organic traffic to your site, you need effective SEO services along with excellent, tested, and proven content. It may be worth considering website content updates if you are not seeing the SEO results you expect.
What Kind of Content Do You Need to Rank on Google?
Informative, engaging, and trustworthy content is crucial for your website’s SEO to rank high on Google’s SERPs. Does that mean you need blogs or other types of long-form content? Not necessarily. Blogs are certainly one way to go, and some argue they are the best for SEO because they inherently have larger word counts. More words means a chance to have more keywords. And more keywords means better rankings, right? Well, not exactly.
According to a recent article published by Search Engine Journal, “Google’s Answer on Ideal Content Length for SEO,” we might have a clear, cut-and-dry answer. However, despite the clickbaity headline here, Google hasn’t actually given an ideal length for content. The ideal length is simply one “bringing unique value to the web overall,” according to Google’s John Mueller, senior webmaster trends analyst and search relations team lead. In America, we have a tendency to believe more is better. But impactful SEO isn’t as simple as that.
That’s because Google has those “specific rules” we mentioned briefly above, and they have limits to how many keywords can be used in a piece of content. Too few, and the content—landing page, blog, or service page—won’t show up in SERPs. Too many, and Google will flag it for black hat SEO, which simply means trying to game the system. Black hat SEO can refer to multiple different ways of trying to trick Google into getting your site to rank, but keyword stuffing is one major red flag.
On the flip side of black hat SEO is white hat SEO, which is what we adhere to at SharpNet Solutions. We lean into more than 25 years of professional and proven SEO experience to write a variety of informative, interesting, useful, and trustworthy kinds of content for your website to promote the best SEO results. Plus, our SEO team fine-tunes every piece of content before it goes out the door to ensure it will rank high on search engines.
“clients that have ongoing monthly content as part of their SEO services are seeing better results on Google”
Types of Content You Can Use to Support Your Website’s SEO Efforts
There are many types of content you can use to support your SEO efforts on your website, from pillar blogs and FAQ pages to landing pages, service pages, and even evergreen content. As long as you are introducing fresh, quality content on a regular basis, that is the key to getting the best SEO results.
Well-written and valuable content on your website gives you the best SEO results. Full stop. But that doesn’t mean you need to write a whole library of long-form content. Landing pages and service pages for small businesses work great, as do newsworthy pieces. Evaluate your existing website. Are there at least 10 separate web pages, more if you have an e-commerce business? Are there at least 300 or more words of content on each of those pages? That is the minimum recommended word count for ideal keyword implementation. Do any of your web pages contain duplicate content? If so, Google likely isn’t even acknowledging they exist, so it’s best to have duplicated content rewritten so it’s original.
Let’s explore the best types of content for your website that have been proven to help companies rank on Google’s SERPs:
- Long-Form Content or Pillar Blogs: When people think about content on a website that supports the best SEO results, their mind usually first goes to blogs. We like long-form content to drive traffic to sites, no doubt about it. This isn’t necessary for every website, but if there’s a topic your company wants to discuss in detail, blogs are where to share this information and establish authority on the subject. You can use the space to discuss what your company does, from an overview to a focused aspect of your business such as a specific product or service you specialize in. Long-form content can also be useful when you have a big company change, like explaining why prices went up, or to announce an upcoming event. The options are limitless. The bottom line is you want your blogs to provide useful information for the reader: something they can get, gain, learn, or benefit from.
- Service Pages: These shorter pages, usually anywhere from 300 to 500 words, describe a product or service your company offers. They work as an explainer to one particular aspect of your business. For instance: An aeration and overseeding page for a landscaping company, or a water heater repair page for a plumbing company. At SharpNet, our experts determine the most searched for keywords for the service area and work them into the page content naturally for readability.
- Landing Pages: A landing page, specified for a given location, is another great way to add content to a website and improve SEO results. Imagine you own a car dealership located in one city, but there are many neighboring towns or suburbs nearby. You can create location landing pages for those surrounding areas, attracting residents from a broader area to your specific location.
- FAQs: Frequently asked questions pages, or sections at the end of pages, are a proven way to add to the E-E-A-T scores of pages. That’s because they provide real value to visitors by directly answering their questions, which usually clears up any misunderstandings and helps prospective customers take the next step.
- Evergreen Content: Just like an evergreen tree is green all year round, evergreen content is relevant into the foreseeable future. How-to guides work well as evergreen content, as do case studies and interviews. These can be useful for traffic and viewership for many months or even years into the future.
- Newsworthy or Trend-Based: The opposite kind of approach from evergreen is newsworthy or trendy content. Depending on what field you’re in, you’ll likely notice when something newsworthy happens, and writing a piece of content, usually a blog or article, on that news can earn you some short-term, high-volume traffic to your website.
Case Study: Companies That Have Monthly Content Updates vs. Those That Don’t
At SharpNet Solutions, we know exactly how impactful ongoing, monthly content updates to your website are on SEO because we see the results firsthand. SharpNet’s services are customizable for every business we partner with. As a full-service digital marketing agency, we offer comprehensive SEO services, content writing and page builds to support SEO, web hosting, PPC advertising, and social media advertising for businesses of all sizes.
For some clients, we manage their website and SEO services, but don’t provide ongoing monthly content. For others, we do it all.
We looked into five different companies to examine how much ongoing website content updates support SEO. And the results are clear: Content makes all the difference in terms of impressions and website visits.
- Company A recently decided to go from having no content with their SEO services to having monthly content services. In the month before adding content services, they saw 891 impressions and 135 website visits. In the first month since we started supporting their SEO with content, they saw 12,400 impressions and 1,090 visits. That’s almost 14 times the number of impressions and just over 8 times the number of visits.
That type of boost isn’t guaranteed for every client, but it’s certainly possible.
This second comparison is between companies with SEO services who have content services vs. companies with SEO services with no supporting content. The companies are in the same industry.
Over the last three months, two different plumbing companies saw solid numbers in terms of both impressions and visits, but the one getting content was certainly higher in both categories:
- Company B (SEO without content): 288,000 impressions, 472 visits. Or: 96,000 impressions and 157 visits per month.
- Company C (SEO with content): 334,000 impressions, 686 visits. Or: 111,333 impressions and 229 visits per month.
And finally, these two companies are in the construction industry:
- Company D (SEO without content): 17,000 impressions and 33 visits over the last six months. Or: 2,833 impressions and 5.5 visits per month.
- Company E (SEO with content): 128,000 impressions and 562 visits. Or: 21,333 impressions and 94 visits per month.
In this last grouping, we can see the company with content saw 7.5 times the impressions and 17 times the visits.
It’s important to note these results vary by industry and location. But overall, the clear trend is that clients that have ongoing monthly content as part of their SEO services are seeing better results on Google and more organic traffic visiting their sites. More visitors on your website translates to more customers to help your business grow.
Get a Free SEO Review
Contact SharpNet Solutions today for a free SEO review, and let’s explore how SEO and ongoing content services can boost your company’s online presence!