By Logan Livers, B² Interactive
When trying to capitalize on search engine optimization, one of the most important areas of focus should be your on-page body content. Relying solely on page titles, keywords, and meta descriptions won’t improve your search engine rank (or, at least, not that much). Solid body content, however, acts as a foundation for your website, laying the groundwork necessary for semantic search queries. So…why is this important?
Search Engines Notice Body Content
Don’t get us wrong. Search engines definitely notice meta descriptions, tags, keywords, and page titles, as these are all important for helping search engines and their users understand what your website provides. But in a recent video, Matt Cutts (head of Google’s Webmaster team) points out that you should never ignore the body content on your website. “If you don’t have the text, the words that will really match on the page, then it’s going to be hard for us to return that page to users,” said Cutts, who used special effects to show himself without a body.
So while it’s great to include the smaller content (like keywords and descriptions), they don’t help SEO much on their own. Just as you shouldn’t be able to learn everything about an article from its headline, search engines won’t learn everything from your website’s snippets. Search engines need the detail provided in body content to make sense of your website and determine how it can help those searching for information.
Quality Content Means Better User Experience
With Google’s increased focus on user experience, great content has basically become a core metric. Because of this, sites that have thin or duplicate content get penalized by Google and drop lower in search engine rank. By focusing on the user instead of forcing keywords and other SEO tactics, your content becomes a greater asset to your website while simultaneously becoming more useful for your site visitors.
With increasingly complex algorithms, search engines will be better equipped to understand the true message of your content and able to match your website with search queries without unnatural keywords. So when it comes to working on your website’s SEO, don’t underestimate the importance of high-quality body content and how it can create building blocks for the rest of your online efforts.
If you need a way to remind yourself of the importance of body content, just picture Matt Cutts’ floating head and how it just looked a bit off. Your main takeaway from his video should be that your website can seem a bit off to search engines if it doesn’t include a solid body, too.
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B² Interactive is a full-service digital marketing agency in Omaha, NE that fuses web development with content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, local listing management, and more to offer a well-rounded web presence for businesses. The co-founders of B² Interactive have years of experience building, operating and promoting sites—small and large, local and national. Services offered include Website Design and Development, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, and Paid Search Advertising Management. Follow B² Interactive in Omaha socially for our latest updates: B² Interactive on Twitter, B² Interactive on Facebook, B² Interactive on Google+.
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