Content is one of the most critical aspects of SEO. Without quality content it is near impossible to rank well on the search results pages. This is because the Web is all about content. Content is what pushes up the value of the website and the search engines. Search engines want to present the best content for the search query possible and weed out the garbage. This is a constant battle and search engines change their algorithms to seek to improve search results. For long term SEO, content should be the priority of any website.

First and foremost, when creating content, keep the best interest of your visitors in mind. Creating compelling content for your visitors will have optimum impact in SEO. You want to create content that people will want to bookmark, link to from the blogs, like or plus one on Facebook and Google, and return to the site. This will have a great impact on SEO.

Primary content can be broken down into these aspects: text, images, and video. Try to use the combination of all three as much as possible. Visitors and search engines love all three.

When it comes to text content, be sure to include your most important keywords in headings and subheadings. That means including them in <H1>, <H2>, etc., tags. Use the exact keyword in the text as much as logically is reasonable without overdoing it. The text should make sense when being read by a person and not sound like you are stuffing keywords for the sake of search engines. This would be counterproductive as search engines are become more and more smart to figure out these tactics.

Images should use ALT tags to describe the content of the image and file naming should reflect the content of the images as well. These items should be exact matches for or related to the keywords you are targeting on the page.

Videos are also great sources of content. One way you can optimize them for SEO is by creating a YouTube account and upload videos then imbed them in your pages. On YouTube you can also add title, description, and keywords or tags. Obviously you would want to include your website URL in the description.

Create Fresh Content

There are many ways you can produce fresh content. The chief way is by having a blog and updating it on a regular basis. You can have a blog externally hosted (i.e. at another domain name, blogger.com, wordpress.com , etc.). However it is recommended that you have a blog at the website you want to build traffic to. This way all content you add will directly benefit your site. You don’t need to write every day, but spending a couple of hours or more on your blog a week can go a long way to improve your traffic and search engine ranking.

Don’t know what to write about? There are many ideas floating out there: write a review, write about an experience, write about a news item (scan websites related to your business for ideas), write about an idea you have the would save time or money for your audience/customers, etc. Your blog post does not need to be long, 300-500 words is enough. Blogging is by far the most popular way of leveraging content for SEO benefits. But it is not the only way.

Can you take photos of anything related to your business? Posting them online in galleries is an excellent way to gain attention to your services and build traffic. How about video? It is easy now to have a page on sites like YouTube, upload videos you take on your camera and embed them in your website. If you can think of a Web-based service you can offer to your visitors, this is an excellent way to offer greater value to them, which in turn increases the ranking of your site on the search engines.