The Importance Of Relevant Content In SEO

For a long time in SEO, there was a major focus on the use of backlinks as the main tool of SEO...because it worked. Search engine specialists were easily able to get good rankings by throwing a whole bunch of links towards a page, regardless of the actual content that was on that page. But as Google has tweaked and improved it's search engine algorithm, the importance of relevant content in SEO has grown.

Like with many other improvements Google makes to their algorithm, the improvement made with regards to relevant content are backed up by patents that Google uses to ensure that their search engine stays at the top of the pack and returns the most relevant results. For example, in February of 2010 Google applied for a patent (application #20100138421) for a way of weeding out inadequate search results based on better matching between keywords and the content on potential pages that target that keyword.

Now when we say relevant content, we don't mean keyword spamming a page so that there's no doubt what keyword you're trying to rank for. This no longer works either, and can actually result in your site getting lower rankings. What we're talking about is relevant, well written content that not only uses your main keywords, but also uses other associated words that you'd expect to be used when talking about that topic.

This is known as LSI - Latent Semantic Indexing. So as an example. lets say you were targeting a keyword like golf clubs. In your articles and across your website you'd interchange this with keywords like golf equipment, golf sticks, golf irons, drivers etc. This is a much more natural way to create your content and Google's search engine is becoming smart enough to differentiate between sites that do and don't use a wide range of LSI phrases. So what does this mean for you as a webmaster or SEO specialist?

Well you need to create great content. This content should not only use your target keyword, but a range of other associated phrases in a natural way. And of course the content needs to be relevant to the main keyword you're targeting.