Much has been said about needing good SEO to help your business move up the rankings, but with all the advances in technology, is written content still relevant for search engine optimisation? Some experts think it is not as important as it used to be, but it is an ongoing debate as there are others that think it is the most relevant content of all.
Search engines are very clever. They not only have to deal with every website that appears, they also need to be able to do so in different languages. SEO is not something that applies just to English-speaking countries: France, Spain, Italy, Austria, India, China, Germany and everywhere else in the world use SEO.
How Written Content Can Help SEO
There are many ways that written content can improve SEO substantially. In a lot of people’s minds, it is the main source of SEO improvement as it is the most easily identifiable asset for search engines to select. However, with so many millions of websites for search engines to consider, in so many different languages, they may still struggle to discover some sites.
There are a few ways that this can be remedied and you can make your site easier for them to find. For instance, possibly the most important aspect is keywords. This is something search engines heavily rely on to more easily identify worthwhile sites. Keywords should be connected to the topic to attract the audience you are after and should be included in titles, URLs, and headings as well as the content.
Most countries have experts who can help you to utilize your content to its best advantage. Using France as an example, SEO consultant France Elodie Gythiel has a marketing background and believes that the most important thing is to localize your content. What works well in one country may not work so well in France. Customers have different cultures and websites need to take that into account. For example, bragging about commercial success will not be seen positively, while social initiatives could help build a brand locally.
Search Engines Using Videos and Images For SEO
Videos and images are sometimes overlooked when maximising SEO capabilities. Their use is becoming more and more prevalent as people become less inclined to read long texts. If there is a video or image to stimulate the reader’s imagination, this can sometimes benefit traffic and SEO.
Some studies report that content with images gets 94 percent more views than content without, and there are even some popular platforms that revolve completely around images and videos. Viewers are also much more likely to share and link content if it contains something interesting to look at.In addition, videos and images can actually make it much easier to articulate points that a writer might be struggling to make.
Another large advantage of images and videos is that they can help overcome the language barrier. A picture or video can say much without any language being involved; there is no need to use Google Translate, if the content is in Spanish, Dutch, French or any other language because no matter which country viewer are in, they all see the same thing.
Does Social Media Affect SEO?
In today’s society using social media is incredibly crucial and many would argue that this is where sites gain the most traction, especially once they are large and have good traffic. Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn allow for easy access to shared websites, and businesses can also set up their own social media accounts to directly advertise their services.
Social media shares can lead to links, but all of this only comes if the content itself actually draws in well enough to justify users sharing it. If the content is good enough, not only is it likely to improve SEO, but it will also increase the life of the content itself and thus garner more traffic. Dealing with SEO through social media is just another one of the many ways SEO experts help their clients to become a recognised brand and move up the search engine rankings.
Brand recognition is a massive part of the success of any business and the bigger and better your social media presence is, the more well-known your site will become. This can be very advantageous as people may award the site “verbal links” by bringing it up in conversation or mentioning it on their own personal social media pages.
Your presence on social media should always be positive and never ignored. Nothing upsets potential customers more than not getting a reply to a query.
Use a combination of written content (including the same keywords as on your website) with images, and videos. The combination of all three produces the best results for ranking results. So, in answer to the original question – yes, written content is still relevant for SEO.
