Is writing good content the best SEO?

[mrodriguez1440]

Hi,

After reading Mr. Shepard's amazing article on the 7 concepts of advanced on-page SEO (https://moz.com/blog/7-advanced-seo-concepts), I decided to share my own experience in hopes of helping others.

I started doing legal SEO back in 2013. At the time I really didn't know much about SEO. My first client (my brother) had recently left the D.A.'s office to become a criminal defense attorney. I told him to write content for the following areas: domestic violence, sex crimes, and homicide.

He finished his first content piece on domestic violence and I was not impressed. It seemed too unique, individualized, and lacked the "generic" feel that many of the currently ranking pages had. Please note that I don't mean "generic" in a negative way. I just mean that his content regarding domestic violence felt too personalized. Granted, his "personalized" approach came from a Deputy D.A. with over 13 years handling domestic violence, sex crimes, and murder cases.

I was inclined to re-write his content, but lacking any experience in criminal law I really had no choice but to use it.

IMPORTANT:  Please note that I barely knew any SEO at the time (I hadn't even yet discovered MOZ), and my brother knew, and continues to know, absolutely nothing about SEO. He simply wrote the content from the perspective of an attorney who had spent the better part of 13 years handling these types of cases.

The result?  Google: "Los Angeles domestic violence lawyer/attorney", "Los Angeles sex crimes lawyer/attorney", and "Los Angeles homicide attorney." They have held those spots consistently since being published.

I know that MANY other factors contribute to the success of content, but at the time I published them we had few links and very little "technical SEO."

Unfortunately, I started learning "SEO" and applied standard SEO techniques to future content. The result? Never as good as the articles that were written with no SEO in mind.

My purpose in writing this is to help anyone about to tackle a new project or revamp an existing site. Before getting too caught up in the keywords, H tags, and all the other stuff I seem to worry too much about, simply ask yourself - "is this great content?"

Thanks again to the MOZ team for the great advice they have shared over the years. Honestly, I think I sometimes become overly reliant on SEO b/c it seems easier than taking the time to write a great piece of content.

P.s. Any "SEO" stuff you see on the above-mentioned pages was done by me after the pages ranked well.

P.p.s. I don't mean to imply that the above-mentioned pages are perfect, because they are not. My point is that content can rank well even without any emphasis on SEO, as long as the person writing it knows about the subject and takes the time to write something that readers find useful.

[donford]

Thanks for sharing.

This is an interesting case for me. On one hand by writing technical no keyword content he likely drew a lot of technical links to the site due to depth. Links from high authoritative sites like Colleges and Government sites.

On the other hand it may have limited appeal to the general population due to the technical nitty gritty, where they just want to know if "X" firm handle said type of cases and what kind of cost is associated with it. But I could also see how more important high profile clients may find the technical stuff more important as cost is less of an issue.

All and all this was a good read.

Thank you,

Don

[EGOL]

Thanks for sharing this great story.   I am glad that your brother's website is doing so well.  His website is ranking well in some very competitive SERPs.

I spend most of my time writing content.  I spend almost no time on the "standard jobs of SEO" other than a small amount of keyword research and writing good <title>and <meta description> tags.   I believe that the quality of the content (interest level, ease of reading) and how it is presented (interesting images, lots of subheadings to punctuate and facilitate scanning) are very important.</p> <p>Keep up the great work.  You made some very valuable observations and thanks again for sharing them here. </p></title>

[MoosaHemani]

Loved every word of it and yes content is playing the backbone these days when it comes to ethical SEO. Ideally, Google should consider content as an important ranking factor because this is one thing that users will read and based on it a user will make their buying decisions.

I mean obviously if you are in a competitive niche, just content might not help you win the game but saying that minus content just with titles, meta descriptions, page speed and other ranking factors you can rank well, might be true few years back but defiantly not today!

In the Modern day SEO its safe today that Content is the Trump Card!

[mrodriguez1440]

Good point. It's definitely a "niche" area. Then again, the CPC for "Los Angeles domestic violence attorney" is typically around $50 - $70 per click, which may or may not help assess its competitiveness.

[_nitman]

Hi mrodriguez1440,

That's a very valid concern. Well, I think the primary reason behind this whole change is google's algorithm updates. Google has become very very smart these days and just pushing content might not get you good ranking these days.

And, may be when you published that content which is not a very common topic for the bloggers, there might have not enough decent quality content on the web (I'm not sure, just thinking aloud).