Is it True That Content is King?

Content is only king if you have attacked a competitive niche, therefore, you have to do better than your competitors to rank above them.

This is something i have tried and tested myself over the last twelve months or do. I have a one page blog with a 600 word article sitting nicely at no2 in google for its keyword, took just 30 edu links to get there and has been there since july 2011 with out updating it.

Interestingly, sitting above me at no1 is a forum post on the same subject and keyword as mine from 2004...eight years ago!

So, if you are going after a big niche then fresh content is what you need. If you going after a niche/keyword that has little competition then no content is not king. Tried and tested by me.

Content isn't necessarily king or even queen. I pull 150K+ SE hits per day and 90%+ of my content is auto generated garbage. Content might help you get good backlinks but it's those backlinks that get you the rankings and the traffic. Really all that content is doing is giving you a medium to stuff keywords into the page, so you can hit the keyword density you want and also get more shots at long tail traffic by including related keywords in the page.

Content is more of a necessity in the more competitive serps that have the spam dial cranked right up... But that's not necessarily the easiest, the best or the most profitable way to get traffic.

Search engine are being continuously refined to allow only unique content and my answer is yes. Try adding as many original articles as possible, you will definately see positive results.

Autumn said:

Content isn't necessarily king or even queen. I pull 150K+ SE hits per day and 90%+ of my content is auto generated garbage. Content might help you get good backlinks but it's those backlinks that get you the rankings and the traffic. Really all that content is doing is giving you a medium to stuff keywords into the page, so you can hit the keyword density you want and also get more shots at long tail traffic by including related keywords in the page.

Content is more of a necessity in the more competitive serps that have the spam dial cranked right up... But that's not necessarily the easiest, the best or the most profitable way to get traffic.

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Hello Autumn,

I think there is something else contributing to your 150k hits per day.

If 90% of your content is auto generated garbage then how is your site generating 150K from the search engines? from your manipulative link building? you must have earned that trust from somewhere especially now Panda has been released. If your content is garbage then how is Panda not penalizing you?

You post is absolutely confusing and I would like some clarification if you wouldn't mind.

Fathom said:

Hello Autumn,

I think there is something else contributing to your 150k hits per day.

If 90% of your content is auto generated garbage then how is your site generating 150K from the search engines? from your manipulative link building? you must have earned that trust from somewhere especially now Panda has been released. If your content is garbage then how is Panda not penalizing you?

You post is absolutely confusing and I would like some clarification if you wouldn't mind.

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All SEO is is giving the SEs the combination of content and backlinks that they want.

"Good" content from the SE's perspective is content that a) hits all the right textual metrics eg. keyword density and distribution, content length, perhaps sitting within a certain range on readability scores etc. and b) that has a lot of backlinks, and the right kind of backlinks. Remember that the SEs can't actually tell whether your content is "good" as in factually correct or well written (although the human spam reviewers who might see your site as some point can).

So my content is good in that I can get it to hit the text metrics within the certain range that I think is what Google is looking for. And I get lots of (automated) backlinks, and not from the usual places that your typical Scrapebox spammer is getting them from either. But my content is not "good" by the usual sense of the word ie. human readers wouldn't think it was good if they actually read it.

Autumn said:

All SEO is is giving the SEs the combination of content and backlinks that they want.

"Good" content from the SE's perspective is content that a) hits all the right textual metrics eg. keyword density and distribution, content length, perhaps sitting within a certain range on readability scores etc. and b) that has a lot of backlinks, and the right kind of backlinks. Remember that the SEs can't actually tell whether your content is "good" as in factually correct or well written (although the human spam reviewers who might see your site as some point can).

So my content is good in that I can get it to hit the text metrics within the certain range that I think is what Google is looking for. And I get lots of (automated) backlinks, and not from the usual places that your typical Scrapebox spammer is getting them from either. But my content is not "good" by the usual sense of the word ie. human readers wouldn't think it was good if they actually read it.

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I think we are going to have to agree to disagree because I'm not going to get into a debate with you on this on a public forum.

I hope for your sake that you are employing people in the thousands before Google catches on to you.

My input: Serp Rankings is king. Traffic is king. without traffic then only ghosts reads your content. Your content comes close to king.!!!

i know some people truely believe that content is king so trash away at my content.

trevorhoang said:

My input: Serp Rankings is king. Traffic is king. without traffic then only ghosts reads your content. Your content comes close to king.!!!

i know some people truely believe that content is king so trash away at my content.

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And how do you get serp rankings and SE traffic?

From my personal prospective and what I have done, I believe content is king along with the right combination of backlinks. Google deindexed a few of my sites because of spammy auto-gen articles

Interesting read, i'll see what everyone else comes up with so I could implement the idea and possibly use it to better rank my sites.

Content is king from my experience. add building quality backlinks to it consistently and we've got a winner.

I lean towards Autumn on this exchange. "Unique content" does not necessarily mean "great" or excellent content, just content that meets the SEO metrics. The almighty Google algo is software, it can only evaluate content in terms of those metrics, not in terms of whether the info is pleasing to a human. So long as a site is serving those metrics and not tripping any other alarms for being 'unusual' (i.e., too high a CTR for Adsense ads on the site), there won't usually be problems from Google about the content.

Unique Content is like a new product in a market which attracts buyer/user/visitor.

zebrahat said:

I lean towards Autumn on this exchange. "Unique content" does not necessarily mean "great" or excellent content, just content that meets the SEO metrics. The almighty Google algo is software, it can only evaluate content in terms of those metrics, not in terms of whether the info is pleasing to a human. So long as a site is serving those metrics and not tripping any other alarms for being 'unusual' (i.e., too high a CTR for Adsense ads on the site), there won't usually be problems from Google about the content.

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Google's algorithm may only be software but that software has had billions of dollars of investment and constantly being improved by the best engineers around the world.

Google's machine learning algorithms detects unnatural links and devalues them, they also detect duplicate and spun content as well as low quality content. Autumn is claiming to receive 150K visits per day from this kind of content.

Panda detects the average bounce rate, how long someone spends on a page and whether or not that person has moved on to another page on the site as well as other indicators, basically if the user thinks the content is bad Google will know, so Autumn is not only avoiding the search engines but she is avoiding Panda. Why not share this information with your fellow BHW members?

Google also uses trust metrics of an entire website. A site that receives nearly half a million visits a month has to have high trust otherwise Google would not rank them. Highly trusted links are not earned manipulatively and if you did somehow mange to get one of these highly trusted links, you better make sure the majority of your links are natural otherwise Google may devalue it and leave that highly trusted site with less trust itself.

Content is the foundation of any site, if you have bad content then why is Google going to rank your site? we are not in the 1990's Google resolved this problem years ago.

Even if you focus on the lowest competitive keywords Google only has a certain amount of trust for your site, they will simply not rank you at all which would result in no traffic. You may be able to get away with this at first but it does not last.

Black hat SEO is not about creating low quality content and building those easy to get manipulative links anymore, you need to be smarter than that.

Fathom said:

And how do you get serp rankings and SE traffic?

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Well spun congent is treated as king in the eyes of google. We all know that google loves fresh new relevant content but us blackhatters can trick google into thinking that it is fresh new relevant content. Getting a website to a good rank and gain traffic is still king in my eyes. After the traffic, tons of doors open up for the webmaster.

my arguement still remains: traffic is king

I'm still not convinced personally. I have excellent, high quality content articles on my sites that were 'designed for the user' not the search engines. I paid good $ for these and continue to update them regularly but some of them don't rank well at all due to competitors having more inbound links. It's very annoying when the top 10 is literred with spammy sites, some of which has spun content that doesn't even read well! Anyway, I'm going to continue to ensure the content on my sites is of the hgihest quality as I know in the long run it will pay off and the panda will sink its claws into the poor quality sites sooner or later!

trevorhoang said:

Well spun congent is treated as king in the eyes of google. We all know that google loves fresh new relevant content but us blackhatters can trick google into thinking that it is fresh new relevant content. Getting a website to a good rank and gain traffic is still king in my eyes. After the traffic, tons of doors open up for the webmaster.

my arguement still remains: traffic is king

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Prove to me that your site with spun content is receiving traffic from the SE's, bet you can't. Prove to me that any site with spun content receives alot of traffic from the SE's.

I know the truth hurts, but we are all on the same side.

Jinko said:

I'm still not convinced personally. I have excellent, high quality content articles on my sites that were 'designed for the user' not the search engines. I paid good $ for these and continue to update them regularly but some of them don't rank well at all due to competitors having more inbound links. It's very annoying when the top 10 is literred with spammy sites, some of which has spun content that doesn't even read well! Anyway, I'm going to continue to ensure the content on my sites is of the hgihest quality as I know in the long run it will pay off and the panda will sink its claws into the poor quality sites sooner or later!

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What you consider to be high quality may actually not be or you just have not given it enough time to receive those natural links. I advise you to read your competitors content as well as the overall site and ask yourself if your content justifies ranking above them. If your page and site is better than theirs then you just need to give it more time.

To get your content seen by more people try building related social friends and if your content is news worthy submit a paid press release. Another great way to get your content seen is to guest post on related blogs.

Yes every day and any day. You need good content to make user's stick and keep a decent bounce rate.

In my opinion content is still king but backlinks are the queen

you need both.. remember google wants relavant websites for SERPS our goal as SEO / Internet Marketers is to make them that way in googles eyes.

good luck getting ranked for the term "shoes" with just content

Fathom said:

Prove to me that your site with spun content is receiving traffic from the SE's, bet you can't. Prove to me that any site with spun content receives alot of traffic from the SE's.

I know the truth hurts, but we are all on the same side.

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i actually use a good amount of spun content to build a website. then i outsource the backlinking to increase SERPS. when it is ranked well, depending on the type of website, i would either put in some unique content for the readers or leave it as a micro niche website.

i sense some hostility from you! lol if im mistaken then my apologies but my gameplan works for me . building a website requires CONTENT but im saying that ranking a website doesnt require unique content (hence content is king).

once the traffic comes then I can choose to put in unique content or leave it as micro niche.

btw no one would prove to you what you are asking for proof. this is only my speculation . cheers