It’s been said to death but I’ll say it again; content is and always will be king. Original, natural, well-written content that has a balanced density of targeted keywords will not only provide your readers with a high quality user experience, but also significantly improve your chances of ranking well in search engines.
Some people think writing for people and search engines is very different, but it’s become one in the same focusing on relevance and value to the user. Content isn’t the only thing out there that’s taken into consideration when ranking a website, but I’d say it’s definitely up there and will even let you get away with mistakes elsewhere if your content is killing it.
Making sure your content is original is only part of the equation though. You also have to keep it current, constantly updating and maintaining to remain in the good graces of the search engines. Some content is timeless, but for the most part, new and fresh is going to be of greater value than old and outdated.
A lot of websites will try to stuff keywords into poorly written text, failing to understanding that search engine algorithms today are more than capable of differentiating a page that’s written for people, or one that’s attempting to game the system. The way it works is simple: the best websites are going to have the best rankings and you get there by delivering high value, original content.
If your website doesn’t change for a while, you might even get penalized by search engines. Worse, if you’re trying to stuff keywords in hopes of manipulating the results, you take the chance of having your pages delisted from the results altogether.
At the end of the day keep it simple and easy to access. All the traffic in the world is not going to do you any good unless you can get people to click through and take action (conversion). People come to your website with an objective in mind, but your goal is to persuade your readers to become customers; make it easy for them.
