I have been mulling over the firestorm of response I have received from ‘The Death of SEO: The Rise of Social, PR, and Real Content’ article that went up at noon on the 20th of July and trended to #1 on Forbes for several days while I was on vacation (keeping me up well past midnight with spotty internet access each night for a week replying to comments.)
Number 1 Most Popular article on Forbes – The Death of SEO: The Rise of Social, PR, and Real Content – July 24, 2012
Copy writers and marketers agreed with me and cheered. SEO ‘gurus’ made me tighten up my semantics. Dell Computer thanked me. Adam cursed me. Google never said a word. Then those who claimed to be ‘professional’ almost agreed with the final summation. The real professionals were easily picked out by their approach and expertise. We eventually all agreed that onsite, internal, or technical SEO is more important than ever (the practice of making your content adhere to best practices so Google ranks you high).
Those who didn’t read the entire thread to my final comment are still stuck at the beginning arguments. I tried to help them skip ahead. The ethical questions that were raised were addressed in comments and individual email conversations that are still continuing even now.
I had one category of response that intrigued me: Several commenters said it is too expensive for the average entrepreneur or executive to consistently and cost-effectively generate real content.
I wholeheartedly disagree.
This article will address three issues:
- My definition of real content.
- How entrepreneurs can generate real content
- The ‘Core’ content model
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DEFINITION OF REAL CONTENT
Notice I said ‘real content’. Not just ‘great content’. Content can be great but not real.
That is the crux of the sidebar ethics question that was debated in the last article.
Real content is specifically designed to provide direct value in the Internet experience. Real content can be text, audio, video, pictures, drawn in an infographic, or more I’m sure.
My assertion is that content that is generated to point to other content isn’t real content, it’s fake content. If its sole purpose is to raise the ranking in Google of other content, it’s counterfeit content. Nobody writes real great content only for the sake of backlinks to other content that only the Google bots read and index.
I wonder if Google could give us a feel for how many items of fake content there is on the Web that points to real content.
10 to 1, 100 to 1, 500 to 1?
Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenkrogue/2012/08/04/the-death-of-seo-part-2-generating-real-content/?ss=strategies-solutions