Is it still google's policy "the more content the better"?

I don't know for certain. The last SEO book I read was "Search Engine Optimization For Dummies" by (SEO Expert) Bruce Clay. From what I have read, Google still values good, relevant content.

However I have a better question: Would your Visitors/People/Market appreciate more (valuable) content?

Jonathan

Since when are images not content?

Hi mikehende,

That was never a Google policy.

I don't think that ever was a valid theory either, except for a few specialized situations.

Google treats different types of queries differently. There are some types of queries that benefit from long-form content, and other types that benefit from short form content. But the key to understanding why one works better than another has more to do with utility value and absolutely nothing to do with content length.

Generally speaking, if you can increase the utility of your content by shortening it, by making it more concise and quicker to absorb, it almost always will benefit your search rankings.

Quicker, easier, more precise, and more usable always wins the day.

What doesn't work is lengthening the content without increasing the utility value. I have seen a lot of people pumping out garbage in the hopes that it will rank better just because it contains exorbitant amounts of fluff content. That idea comes from a flawed study published by a popular self-described marketing guru. It was based on a flawed study that treated a correlation as causation and drew a flawed conclusion. Not everything that these pop SEO publishers write about is valid, take it with a grain of salt. And conduct your own independent tests.

A true marketer focuses on learning the knowledge and skills it takes to perform their own tests and uses their own data to drive marketing decisions. Blindly following advice from a pop publisher will lead you down some unproductive rabbit holes.

Always view your content creation as if you were presenting it to a niche reader of a popular and trending subject/hobby/interest magazine or news outlet. Know the demographics of your reader and write the things that would motivate that reader to keep paying to buy the magazine.

The content will vary in length and that's not important, but always write concisely (say what you want to say in minimum words). The audience impact is what you want. Use plenty of media including images and video and always remember a bit of humour helps. Try and concentrate on trending topics in your niche and make good use of sharing your posts on social media. Make sure site visitors can also share your content posts. Build a Facebook presence and join and engage with related interest groups. Apart from other SEO techniques, which I wont go into, this will raise your profile in Google and your traffic will increase. But keep at it and add content regularly.

Hope this perspective helps.

Content is king. The more content you have, the more questions your site answers and the more likely it is to appear in the contextual search results. For maximum impact, focus on adding new content that explicitly answers user questions, including 'how to' posts, FAQs, process tutorials and other similar pieces.

Usually when you will read new information for the keyword you searched, you will find that there are many different phrases which are not so clear and need additional explanation.

And same goes for most of the pages you will surf for the same query in SERP.

Now if you will make a page which CONSISTS of those additional phrases and they will be already explained in the same page or through links to deeper pages explaining them, you will have better content hands down.

Is this example makes it more clear?

Of course there are many more additional criterias by which you should optimize your content media and published properties.

Good content will help with SEO, but posting consistently helps also. Don't post four times one month and only once the following month.

Along with helping with SEO if you publish good quality content over time you will be seen as an expert and more people will look to you for answers which in turn leads to more business.

Depends on the content. For example, if you have a tattoo blog, most visitors will be more interested in seeing tattoo images. I have a blog about a specific very cute breed of dogs and had an expert analyze what parts of my blog were getting clicks and it turned out most of my visitors were clicking on the images which makes it harder to monetize the blog.

Hi Mike,

This was the same question which i had several years ago. After lot of research i found this answer. Let me put it in a simple manner.

Search engines doesn't care about the quantity of the content if at end of the day people who visits your website, feels that it is useful and starts engaging with it.

Let me explain by taking an example, consider there are 2 websites for the search term "how to loose weight". In one website there are 20 pages with lot's ans lot's of written content, explaining how to do the exercises. In other website there is only one page which has just 5 images where in each picture shows how to do the exercise. Many people fond the website with images is bit easy to follow, so started engaging with that website.

It doesn't matter how much the quantity of content present in the website, but at the end of the day visitors should be satisfied with the content to rank high in search engines.

Google analyses whether the visitor is satisfied with your website or not by the amount of time spent by each user in your website, number of post shares by the visitors, number of positive comments left by the visitors for each post, etc.

If you have any doubts regarding internet marketing, feel free to contact me, i have been in this industry since 2012 and have seen massive success in it. I believe i can clarify your doubts.

It depends, for me content should be written mainly for the audience and not just google/search engine. That's why I believe in the saying that if the audience like your content so as the google/search engine.
With regards to your top competitor I think maybe an image with little content works for them. You know, there are audiences that are more text than images or vice versa, and some is a little bit of both. So, it is for you to find out what works best for you. I suggest you do a little experiment and most especially a market research, it helps.

In a word: "Yes." Why? Because if you have an "authority Website" all your other (SEO) pages will be given more "value" in terms of Google.

It's not outdated, and will never be! Actually, that depends on the niche you are in. If you're in the travel niche, this might be appropriate, but if you're in the self-help and improvement niche, you definitely need to stuff your website with relevant content.

While content is certainly a HUGE factor in ranking your articles/pages, I found out a few months ago that there were a few things I could do that would give me a huge advantage over the competition, and it definitely has.

The first is to use the Yoast SEO plugin because it will allow you to make sure your on-page SEO is perfect.

The second is to make sure that my theme is 100% optimized for mobile. I saw an article yesterday that stated over 60% of all web traffic is now coming from mobile devices like tablets and phones, so it's super important that your site looks great on mobile devices.

The third was adding rich snippets (schema markup) to my posts. Those are the things like review stars, images, and other information that appears in the search results next to your site's listings. They won't necessarily help you rank better, but they will increase your CTR in a huge way. I have a review blog and I'm positive that rich snippets are giving me an edge over the competition. Even if I'm ranked a little lower than a competitor, having those review stars above your listing really helps to catch people's eye and also it tells people your site is an authority site.

I am also using a really simple free plugin to do this called "All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets." You can grab it right from the WP plugin directory here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in...rich-snippets/

There are other plugins you can use as well, some free and some paid, but as I'm looking mostly to add review stars, that plugin works well for me.

Also, it's important to note that I have never built one backlink to any of my articles, and yet I have hundreds of great backlinks that came naturally. This is really what Google wants to see.

One of the downfalls with being a marketer is that you are always thinking like one.

Try thinking like the every day person who has a passion for a niche and starts a website so they can share their content with the world. They don't think about creating backlinks, and they certainly don't buy backlinks. They concentrate on creating incredible content, and the backlinks come naturally. What's more, the backlinks they get come from reputable sites with lots of juice. Backlinking should never be forced IMO. If your content is good, they will come naturally.

As a website owner, the only things you should be thinking about is making sure that your on-page SEO is perfect, and your content is awesome. Those are the things that are in your control.

I know this strategy works because I have several reviews on my blog that outrank the actual product website.

I also have a formula for all of my posts.

They all include:

- At least 1500-2000 words of 100% unique content.
- At least two images
- At least one video
- Other media like infographics, slideshow presentations, audio files, PDFs, etc.
- At least two outbound links to other authority sites in my niche
- At least one link to another article on my blog
- Keyword density of not more than 1%
- An opt-in form


I have been having great success with this formula. I often end up on page 1 or page 2 for the keyword I'm going after, which is usually something like "Product Name review."

I assume you mean "more content" in the context of more words in a post. What you need to do is to create VALUE for the reader. Don't waffle on and on just to make the post bigger. If you can say something in three paragraphs then leave it at that - don't lengthen it to ten.

I agree with TrafficFlow that some visitors will want to see images in certain types of post, so by all means add them, but only if they are relevant. Google wants to see value and relevance that keep your readers coming back for more.

I also agree with Funtobesocial that REGULAR posting is important.

On Adsense official forum there was a woman asking when her site will be accepted by Adsense (waiting for 2nd review reply). Her site consist only images with text as captions. The experts there told her, with no text based content, it'll be hard to be accepted. Guess what, the next day she reported back that her Adsense application approved, and it's there, the ads appear on her site.

Google prefers good quality content even if it's just a short message with a picture.