Keywords or Quality for SEO: Where to Focus
Should you focus on increasing content quality (“white hat” SEO) or on keyword-centric, search-engine focused tactics (“black hat” SEO)? It’s a question marketers have been deliberating over since the advent of search engines.
For Marketing Insider Group contributor Tyler Tafelsky, as Google has continued to refine its ranking mechanism, the answer has become clear:
The underlying difference between black hat and white hat SEO is that the latter focuses on producing meaningful, valuable, and audience-oriented content (as opposed to slapping-up a bunch of keyword-optimized doorway pages in effort to get them ranking in Google.)
That’s not to say keyword data can’t instruct purposeful content marketing strategies. I’m just saying that black hat, keyword-obsessed tactics are marginally effective and they dilute user experience while disrespecting Google.”
While taking a content-first approach is undoubtedly the better technique, using SEO tactics as one of many content amplifications strategies can help increase the number of eyes on your content. Here are some SEO-focused tactics to supplement your content marketing:
- Use tools like the Google Keyword Planner
- Find out the times of the year when keywords are most often searched for
- Search Google for keywords that reflect your content
- Use social media marketing and advertising to expand the reach of your content
- Get your content published on other related websites.
Click on the link below for Tafelsky’s full article arguing why beautiful content marketing (that ranks!) is primarily end-user focused, with SEO a supplemental focus.
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