My link building company, Creative Content Experts, really took off last year when I had to start working from home due to an illness. I already knew the basics of why and how to build back links, but the last year or so has been a wonderful journey of learning.One of the big decisions we made early on was to write quality content. You might think this statement a bit obtuse, but there are other ways you could build links in a pre-Panda and Penguin world. We used to see article spinning, horrible, crappy content, and all sorts of absolute junk that was no help at all to search engine users.
The problem is that those older processes worked. They actually improved search engine results and it's a hell-a-va-lot cheaper to get someone to write a crappy article loaded with keywords than to get someone to research and write a useful piece.
Quality over Everything
Once we made the decision to write quality content, it was a matter of getting buy-in from customers. In the long-run, this has paid off a thousand fold for our clients. While other sites were building horrible back link profiles that are now biting them in the butt, our clients have soared up the search results and sit neatly at the top. Why? Because our content is quality. Search engines and readers alike can tell.
What is Quality
So let's define quality in terms of SEO:
- It answers the searcher's question. Quality content solves a problem in a real way by answering the search engine user's query. It provides information they were looking for and makes it easy for the reader to understand.
- Optimized. Quality content has been optimized technically using meta tags, keywords, titles, and high-standards for spelling and grammar.
- Graphics. Quality content should include graphics that are labeled properly using alt tags and title tags to help readers and search engines know what the image is about.
- Quantity. Quality content has just enough quantity that it answers the question and also meets the reader's expectations. Some sites like long-form content and others like it short and sweet. But typically 400 words is a minimum for some technical reasons.
These are just a few standards that, when applied to your content, will result in better SEO back link profiles. In later posts I want to talk about guest blogging and how that process works for us.
