Content vs SEO – Which Will Win? (The Answer May Surprise You)

Sep 21, 2009
50 Comments

If you can’t see the Content vs SEO video below, watch it directly on Remarkablogger or YouTube.

Content Is King Of…

…NOTHING, if it cannot be found. If you think that all you have to do is simply “write good content” and you will rank high in search, you are being naïve. Sorry to be so bald (ha ha) about it, but I’m not really doing you a service by pretending otherwise just so you’ll not suffer any angst over your lack of writing and optimization skills.

You Don’t Have To Like It, But…

…I didn’t make the rules. I’m just the guy trying to help you understand them so that you know when to follow them, bend them, or even break them. There are rules to this—it’s not just a matter of my opinion.

You’ve been lied to in a big way. This whole “content vs. SEO” battle is not the real fight, as you’ll see in the video.

Google is the rule maker. Ignore them at your peril. Watch the video to discover what the true relationship is between content and blog seo.

You know who says SEO works? People who have high rankings and benefit from them.

You know who says SEO is bullshit? Mostly (but not always, so note that qualifier before you flame me in the comments) people who have pitiful traffic and who make no money, and who are looking for a scapegoat. For the record, I don’t count Johnny B. among that group.

In other words, if someone isn’t doing well, don’t listen to them. Seriously. I mean, if they’re not already successful, what the hell do they know? At the very least, their credibility is suspect.

And Credibility Counts When Giving Advice

Here’s my credibility:

numberonebaby

Now, let me pose a question: have I sacrificed the quality of my content on Remarkablogger in the name of SEO?

Not in the least, of course.

But… if I wasn’t relentlessly gunning after a top ranking by employing SEO, do you believe I would rank number one?

I doubt very much that I would. But I do, and that’s because there’s a way around this whole “content vs. SEO” question in the first  place.

Do Not Let Yourself Be Held Prisoner

You’re running a business, trying to make it in a cutthroat marketplace. I know how that is, because that’s what I’m doing, too. Part of the reason why I’m succeeding is because I understand how “content vs. SEO” is a false dichotomy. And I want to help you succeed, so I don’t want your thinking to be held prisoner by this false dichotomy.

Watch the video for what I believe is a more helpful way to think about content and SEO, and let me know what you think in the comments or in a post of your own.

  • I knew you would say that :)
    Me, I prefer backlinks. I can rank anything with the right links, but I can't rank great content without backlinks. Though is debatable, I think I would choose backlinks over content.
  • Great content gets backlinks naturally. If it doesn't, it's not great enough. Only a little push at the beginning gets the ball rolling. Consistent great content gets subscribers, which creates an army of backlinkers as soon as new content is published.
  • Hi Michael,
    Thanks for the reply, I thought I was missing something. Now it makes sense. Would be interesting to read something like: Content or backlinks? What would you chose, if you have to choose on of these?
  • Content, every time. :)
  • Agree about content vs. SEO, you really need both. Nice meeting you too at the tweet up before bwe09 at the Monty Carlo. Take care
  • Scott, thanks for your comment. It was great to meet you at BlogWorld (well, before it, actually). Look forward to meeting you again in the future. :)
  • I am not sure I understand the title here. What do you mean by that? When you write something, don't you consider a title, don't you use a few related words in that title? Don't you link internally using that title and keywords? Isn't that SEO?
    So both work together, you don't choose one over the other!
  • Stan, it seems people want to make this issue into an "either/or" situation. Because so many people (wrongly) believe that, I'm essentially baiting them with a provocative title. If I just wrote: "There is no difference between content and SEO" as a headline, nobody would be interested.

    You should use related words in your title, of course, but you would be amazed at the number of people who don't. I've seen blogs that are supposedly about a particular subject, and not seen that subject mentioned by name anywhere on the page.
  • From experience... and you can dig me out of usenet from 1992 pretty easy...

    SEO matters most when
    1. Short term results matter a lot
    2. Competition in the space is fierce.

    Otherwise, maybe not so much.

    That being said, all else equal, SEO wins hands down.
  • Dave, what you say is true, and no doubt there are those who "employ" SEO without knowing anything about it and then later, sort of "fire" it and lose its benefits. The way I approach SEO is very content-driven and link-driven and it's for the long haul, so that even if content ceased to be produced, the site would continue to rank well.
  • Michael, it's been great watching you move from obscurity to dominate your keyword space. I've enjoyed watching someone deliberately target a phrase and consistently aim for the top spot in their niche while producing content worth reading. That's how SEO is supposed to be done. Too often, people make one of two mistakes:

    1) Write great content with SEO as an afterthought - if at all;
    2) Write great SEO using content with little or no value.

    The proper way to do is to write great content is also great SEO. Few people do it so well.
  • Michael, some of the lamest crap I have ever written, with 1 and 2 word titles, ranks first page on Google for it's particular keywords -- by dint of being years old! And I do mean lame. Embarrassingly lame.

    We have the same philosophy to be sure.

    Thanks for taking the time to reply to my comments above. I've always missed the conversational part of usenet, and many blogs comments are more fan fests than real discussion. Disappointing.
  • Dave, yes, age can matter a great deal when it comes to this. Ranking #1 for keywords only matters if there are enough searches on those keywords to matter. It's easy to rank for worthless keywords. I'm not saying that's what you're doing, I only mention it because your comment reminded me this is a "DIY SEO" issue.
  • It seems people are truly divided on this and some say content is king others don't. At the end of the day I believe both are important.
  • Totally agree with you - content and SEO are meant to go together. Like you said, they go hand in hand like chocolate and peanut butter. Two great tastes that taste great together! :)

    I really don't understand why it's such a debate and some people take an either/or position on it. If you want to succeed, you need both.
  • I just found you tonight by entering "add a blog to your website" in google and found great content. Had you not made your title tag that exact keyword phrase (nice SEO there...speaking my language) chances are I would not have found you. So I'm living, current proof of the "inextricably interwingled" comment.

    That said, I think that if you drew a graph with 2 lines representing content and SEO (bear with me, math or graphs are not my strength, so I might butcher this..) with TIME on the horizontal axis, and IMPORTANCE IN GENERATING TRAFFIC on the vertical axis, the content line will be increasing in importance over time and SEO strategies will decrease as TIME passes and search engines get smarter - "the semantic web" I guess they call it....alright....I'm babbling now..Good stuff Michael.
  • Neil, thanks for the kind word. I think Google wants to make SEO irrelevant and that the "semantic" web was D.O.A. Google has a long way to go still to make that happen, but my guess is that's their ultimate aim.
  • Semantic web won't matter until you look around and it's everywhere.

    There's reasons it hasn't caught on:

    1. No immediate benefit to the consumer who needs to be the one using it, that is, adding the semantic data.

    2. Further flattens data silos between businesses requiring proprietary protocols and formatting. No business case for it.

    3. Boring and hard to explain, and the development is dominated by academic weenie type (which I strongly resemble).

    My experience is that SEO matters less over time... but past performance doesn't guarantee future results. 90% SEO is easy enough to get handled now, so why not?

    I'm being a bit of devils advocate here, I know. I did sit in on a pretty rich semantic talk recently, and I will say that if it catches on, whoever wants semantic luvin better be ready to move fast.

    Great site, great blog, came in from Johnny B's link.
  • Dave, thanks for the thoughts. I love it when others add their own experiences and observations here. Devil's advocates are welcome here any day. :) These are things we need to consider and discuss.
  • yup. you and I will probalby be dead before we don't have to worry about SEO...but it will eventually get there.
  • Ray
    Maybe I am missing something. In my opinion good, unique content is the foundation any real SEO professionals strategy.
  • You're not missing a thing, Ray. That's exactly my point. It's not an either/or question. The two are inextricably intertwingled. :)
  • Common sense dictates that SEO optimization and content are both important. I'd guess that over time, the search engines will get better and better at identifying truly unique content, lessening the value of SEO techniques.
  • Couldn't agree more. At the end of the day Google loves relevance and people love Google.

    This simply means that we need to produce content and ensure it can be found by tagging it and making our SEO efforts relevant to the content we produce. Without both the effort is not going to meet its full potential.
  • Nice video and great advice. I am newer to the game been an IT Pro for years but I build intranet sites and web apps that people have to come to. Blogging on the internet is a whole new world for me I can build about anything but whats the point if no one comes to it!

    I started to learn focusing and learning more about seo last month wanted to make sure I wasn't hurting mysite in anyway with all the work I had been putting in to my blog. This month I started targeting keywords that I felt I had a chance with and now my traffic is up.

    Spending some extra time to mix seo and quaily content is well worth it and I am seeing a nice increase in traffic from spending the extra time. Organic traffic make me happy.
  • Jared, thanks. I'm glad to hear that your efforts have paid off! One basic "formula" you can apply is to write for people, but tweak for search engines. That way your content will never cross that line and become to SEO-ish.
  • Hi Michael - Great post and excellent points...credibility is certainly the name of the game for long term success. :)

    I just referenced your blog post in my blog this morning:
    http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com/2009/09/24/content-better-seo/
  • Nick, thanks for the reference, I'm glad you found it worthwhile!
  • Finally got around to watching this and just wanted to say thanks. I don't know how many times I have had this conversations with clients who don't want to pay for both good content and SEO. So thanks again.
  • You're welcome, Bill. It's true: They can pay for good content... or they can REALLY "pay" for bad content! They'll pay either way! :)
  • Someone once said, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." You've nailed it here, Michael. SEO and content go hand in hand like peanut butter and jelly.
  • Allen, I couldn't have said it better. Although, I probably would've used a peanut butter and chocolate analogy. :)
  • Michael,

    Thanks for this. I've always wondered why folks that think SEO is more important than content expect their results to stay at the top of Google. In the end Google weeds out the crap content (that's what I've seen). On the other hand, Google needs a little help (SEO) finding the good content to begin with.

    John
  • John, you're welcome. Unfortunately, there are plenty of high-ranking results that probably don't deserve to be there. This is the kind of SEO that gives the discipline a bad name and makes life tougher for others. When you see it out in the wild, you see an example of placing technique over content.
  • Michael, thanks for saying this!

    What I've seen from Google is that it's fairly easy to game it into a big "pop" but such results are ephemeral. So, maybe half the results on the top page may be junk for a hot keyword, but that half changes pretty rapidly.

    Whereas the really solid results tend to float up and down on the first two pages.

    This is purely observational. I may be completely out to lunch, it's just what I often see on my searches.

    I do a LOT of research on the web, and I regularly work down into the 3rd and 4th pages. There's often very good stuff down there, stuff that should rank a lot higher but doesn't. I guess they need some SEO loving!
  • Dave, your observations are shared by me and many others, and it paradoxically illustrates both points: that SEO is used as a weapon to rank undeserving content, and that it can help great content stay where it's "supposed" to be. For many a month, my rankings for my top keywords continuously fluctuated around the save several slots on the first page of results.
  • Steve Early
    Good morning Michael:

    Nicely done and spot on in my view. It shouldn't be an "either/or" argument because both are critical. It occurs to me that it is important to grow your "legs" (as you call them) over time. Continuous improvement of both your SEO strategy/results and your content is what helps you move greater distances in less time.

    Steve
  • Steve, you're absolutely right. We like to accelerate the learning process whenever we can, not to "cheat" but to gain more experience sooner. Experience is the real teacher.
  • What I think? Well, first of all, thank you! I found your blog a while ago, and you were the first one that I read saying such a simple truth in such a direct way. It helped me a lot. After I started to proactively do SEO, my traffic upped 1000%. Is my content better or worse than before I started to do SEO? Heh. It is as good as always, but now I actually do have someone reading it :)

    So, again, thanks for being so straight and clear cut and getting your message through. I'm listening.
  • Daniduc, thanks so much for your comment! A 1000% increase? That's significant. Delivering value in a straight and clear-cut way is what I aim for. I'm glad you're listening. :)
  • All true, but lots of people who are doing well are also claiming that content is king. So as always it's a question of whether the reader believes what he or she hears, or if they are serious enough about their own business to peel back the layers to get to the truth. For many, the answer is no.
  • Good points, Jay. And who's to say they couldn't be doing even better if they were a little more deliberate about their content and link-building?
  • I am more interested in "incomplete bullshit" than complete bullshit. I do think though, that possessing baseline competence in one area makes it more likely that you'll have baseline competence in another.

    If you have your personal life together...

    ...anyway.

    More on that in a bit.
  • Maybe there's a market for the Missing Bullshit Nobody Told You About.
  • You mean like F#@% therapy?
  • Haha, I knew I shouldn't have written that post. I started out intending to make fun of myself for being a douchebag about my own SEO and probably ended up encouraging a bunch of people to do what I did. Which was due largely to laziness, not careful planning.

    I do think that SEO was never going to get me anywhere at the start, when I was doing only humor. So it's really inconvenient that I should and could be using it now to great advantage, because it really ruins any leg I had left to stand on.

    Although my cheek did get me a link from Remarkablogger. So who's the ninja now?

    [*ducks shiruken*]
  • I thought your post was great for two reasons: it's funny as hell, and it got people thinking. I'm just trying to continue the conversation here rather than hijack your comments. :)
  • You know the problem I run into ALL THE TIME? Like when writing about what I did on IttyBiz, too?

    1. I write what works/worked for me.
    2. I am not remotely normal.

    Hopefully nobody figures that out until after I have made my millions.
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