Quality vs. Quantity - The Web content debate

Every day more and more Web content is added to the Internet. And a lot of it is just plain drivel. With the advent of blogs, content managers, free web hosting of audio and video, and social networking sites, the Internet is full of a lot of garbage.

However, as a corporate website owner, you have to make your site stand out above all of those other sites, not only in the content that you provide, but how the site is ranked on the search engines.

One of the ways - one of the most effective ways-- is quantity. Quantity of information and quantity of time each targeted phrase is used. The problem with this approach is that the human reader has all of that information to fish through, and may get bored and leave before they get to your message and the information they are searching for. Also, new sites/blogs/garbage information is being added to the Web every day. You would have to add more information to your site each day just to keep up. All the while muddying up your message.

Then there is quality. Writing the best information for the human reader, in an easy and accessible way. This way is great for the visitor---that is if you can get them to the site in the first place.

--which brings you back to quantity.

So the key is to marry the two. Write the site for the visitor. Get all the marketing heads together, do the focus groups. Make the navigation easy. Make the content easy to read.

THEN... go in and add several pages of background info. If your product is phones, add more pages about the history of phones, phone plans, phone types, etc. Whatever is appropriate. Put these pages in the site, but not in the main navigation. Use good internal linking. Consider a blog format where suitable - or a news and events section. This gives a good place for additional content that is easy to add into the site. Also, look at the code (H1 tags, alt text, titles) and determine if your side can be optimized on the backend.

Today's SEO Tip: Your site needs to be found. Then you need to keep people there. Marry quality information and quantity of targeted copy.