Is content really king?

lion1978

lion1978

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The phrase “content is king” is one that I have heard many times by internet marketers, of whom manny doesn't even know the original source of the quote, the quote originats from Bill Gates in an interview back in 1996, The ironi is that it's often used as an argument for creating uniqe and original website content.

Why is that ironic you ask

Well becouse Bill Gates did not originally create the operating system that started microsofts business he sold DOS (the original operating system) to IBM without having it, then he found an operating system that met the requirements of IBM and bought that, so that he could deliver his prommise.


Now where am I going with this?

Well I'm arguing that the phrase or quote “content is king” isn't a vlid argument just for creating uniqe original content, it is more an argument that the content on your website should be usefull/helpfull to the reade easily comprehensable an hopefully engaging.


Uniqeness can easily be created even through something someone else wrote if you can simply write it better and in a way that is more suitible for your audience.

There are certain language patterns that allows you to write in a way that has your visitors hanging on to that page and click arround on it and share it for even more exposure, but I'll get into that in another post in the not so disten future.


Let me finish this rambling this this staement:

If content is kin, then copy is the atmophere and marketing GOD.
 
Content isn't even king in SEO. Links are King in SEO. I've got sites that have more authority then the rest of my competitors, and I've constantly just copied and pasted new content from them and have outranked their own content. SEOs hate me... I probably get about 5 DMCA notices a week from Google, I don't give a shit, they still send traffic.

Ultimately Traffic is king - and being able to get that traffic to go where you want to go and engage with the end conversion goal - marketing - that's always going to be king.

You don't even need unique content if you don't focus on the sole SEO route, just content which is useful to engage, setup some FB or Adwords ads, or other traffic sources, and you are golden. All those DMCA notices I'm getting don't do a damn thing to my traffic since my traffic isn't from Google for those pages I'm duplicating.

At the end of the day, it's all a game - but people don't know that name of the game they are playing, let alone the rules to the game.

MODs can you go ahead and close this thread, cause OP almost revealed something that's hitting a bit too close to home...

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I guess you're a clever fellow :smile: I like your style :smile:
 
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Traffic is king was my point exactly.

and btw the sentence "If content is kin, then copy is the atmophere and marketing GOD."
should read "if content is king, then copy is the atmosphere and marketing/traffic is GOD"
Just wanted to correct that in case there are some Japanese people thinking WTF content is groin :-)
 
Hoping I can hook a quick question to your thread mate - Just curious as to how specifically content via blogging for example can convert to traffic. Is it through these individual articles getting indexed by Google for generally long-tail keywords? Then after a while the more quality articles you have the more keywords you get ranked for = the more traffic?

Thanks :smile:
 
Well yes of course if it is either content you have written of the top of your head or if it is based on inspiration (or rewwriting) content that you have read then in the long run you would get more keywords indexed by google and with a little bit of seo/ linkbuilding you would get more traffic, but even more imortantly would be from other different traffic sources such as social media, video where you give a teaser about or of your contetnt getting people to click through to your article.
I am a firm beliver in diversifing your traffic sources, so think about every possible way to drive traffic to your blog and remember that what maybe retweeted a lot isn't nessecerily going to be liked and shared a lot on facebook and so on.
Also you shoould at the end of each blog post have at least on call to action such as "Don't forget to share this posts with your friends" or something like that preferably also collect their email adresses so they can get notified when you make a new post do this with the etchical bribe.
You might want to experiment with content lockers that forces your readers to share,like,tweet or +1 in order to read the full blog posts, if you make the headline and the first part of the post interesting enough most people won't have a problem sharing it, but make a delay so that the get to read some of it first in order to create enough curiousity for them to want to read it all.

Hope it answers your question and if not just ask again and I will try to do a better job of it :smile:
 
lion1978 said:
Well yes of course if it is either content you have written of the top of your head or if it is based on inspiration (or rewwriting) content that you have read then in the long run you would get more keywords indexed by google and with a little bit of seo/ linkbuilding you would get more traffic, but even more imortantly would be from other different traffic sources such as social media, video where you give a teaser about or of your contetnt getting people to click through to your article.
I am a firm beliver in diversifing your traffic sources, so think about every possible way to drive traffic to your blog and remember that what maybe retweeted a lot isn't nessecerily going to be liked and shared a lot on facebook and so on.
Also you shoould at the end of each blog post have at least on call to action such as "Don't forget to share this posts with your friends" or something like that preferably also collect their email adresses so they can get notified when you make a new post do this with the etchical bribe.
You might want to experiment with content lockers that forces your readers to share,like,tweet or +1 in order to read the full blog posts, if you make the headline and the first part of the post interesting enough most people won't have a problem sharing it, but make a delay so that the get to read some of it first in order to create enough curiousity for them to want to read it all.

Hope it answers your question and if not just ask again and I will try to do a better job of it :smile:
Click to expand...

Awesome insight, thanks for taking the time mate I really appreciate it.

Hopefully I can start building up a large quantity of quality articles to aid my efforts :smile:
 
no probs man.
I'm sure can and will after all there is a wold of inspiration out there.
Oh just one more thing do som research on your competiotion and see if you can find out where they are lacking in their marketing or just if you can do better than them, 99% of times you can :wink:
 
Content is needed to rank, but it isn't the most important thing - definitely not "king".

You're not going to rank for anything profitable with just content, you need links. Links are king.
 
I liken the subject to the irrational belief that some people have that everyone's communication and activity is being monitored in real time by the NSA, everywhere they go throughout their daily life. Oh, there's a lot getting recorded and cataloged, for later research when necessary, and I'm certainly not a fan of it. But, lets think about this for a minute. There are over 7 billion people in the world. Can anyone even imagine the amount of bandwidth and hardware necessary to accomplish such a feat for some ~1-4 billion people using modern electronics, every single day? Most of us are not nearly important enough anyways.

Equally ridiculous is the idea that Google will somehow always miraculously know when your content is "legitimate" and well-intentioned, and you will be bequeathed with traffic and user engagement from the heavens. No, they are hardware, software, and algorithms, with limitations just like anything else. Get it however you're going to get it. Maybe sometimes it's legitimate. Maybe sometimes it's cutting corners. Maybe sometimes a bit less ethical. Maybe sometimes it's downright exploitation.

Just remember, the game is the game, nothing more. Take that shit, "yo".

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You'll always get a wide spectrum of answers... at the end of the day it comes down to who is your audience? Write for your audience and you'll get the best results, whatever you're trying to get them to do. Are people going to be sitting there on their phones or at their computers reading your article? Act accordingly... If you get a batch of content from your writer and you can't even bring yourself to read through it because it's so un-engaging, don't expect much different from your audience. There's a lot more that goes into "quality content" than just spelling and grammar, which a lot of publishers still don't seem to grasp. Really comes down to who's it for. Is it for the search engines to read, is it for an audience that expects certain things from your brand, is it for super targeted traffic + where are they coming from...?
 
I've been looking at some of the sites selling over on flippa lately for between $5k-$10k and some of the content is terrible. Very poorly written and full of spelling mistakes...and those guys are still making bank through selling the sites. My 2 cents :wink:
 
@nofnof07 I know what you mean, a lot of sites on flippa as far as I recall are mfa sites and in that case I could actually see a point in writing crappy and boring content in order to make your visitor click through the ads displayed on your site.
In my opinion content comes down to your audience as @MetaData said and what you want them to do,
If for instance I wnated my audience to subscribe to my newsletter I would write up an article/post that would leave them hungry for more and end it with a cliffhanger telling them to subscribe in order to get the last part of the content.
whereas if I wnat my audience to click on a CPC ad I would write as borring as I could be, especially when considering retargeting ads witch should yield an even higher CTR.
 
Also need to remember that not everyone here is in the same business. Comparing someone with an info site or a magazine's content to a spammer is like comparing a library to a guy tossing fliers up in the air or something like that.
If you are going for an info site or a magazine and you have shitty content then you're doing a bad job as a publisher and putting out a bad product for your audience. If your goal is for people to read your content, and your content is bad, then you are bad at your job. Maybe that's okay if you don't have any readers but then you're getting into a chicken and egg situation... Is your content bad because nobody reads it, or does nobody read it because it's bad? The whole "content is or isn't king" thing is played out, because it's people in different businesses. All comes back to the purpose of the content. Is it meant to be plastered all over the place to get you 100k links or is it actually meant to be read?
Here's a really obvious flowchart.
Do you want human beings to read your content?
No - then it doesn't really matter.
Yes - then it should be great.

@Yashar Links are a means to get people to your content, which is a waste of time if the content isn't effective. Without HTML, we wouldn't have links. Without computers, we wouldn't have HTML. Without electricity, we wouldn't have computers. Without water and dirt and wind we wouldn't have electricity so mud is king.
 
Isn't this a little Chicken vs. Egg? Without content, no traffic. Know traffic, know Jesus...or something.
 
IMO your content game should be on fucking lockdown these days. So assuming it is (because why would you even be playing the game if it wasn't), then I believe that promotion and engagement is king.
 
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