Since this topic has come up before, I decided to devote a post to it.

The question is, why do SEOs call the content of the page “content” versus the “writing” on the page? And, what do we mean by “quality content.”

I’m going to devote an entire article to the subject of why quality content floats to the top of the search engine results, so I don’t want to get into a tremendous amount of detail here. After I write the article, I plan to post excerpts from the article here for discussion.

Anyway, the contents of the page can be more than writing. Content can be graphics, a form to complete, a Flash movie, a video file, an audio file, a Podcast, a coloring page, etc. The content of a page simply refers to whatever is on the page, however search engine friendly it might be.

When we’re talking about search engine friendly content, we certainly want more “writing” on the page, because the search engines read text versus images, forms, Flash, video, audio, etc.

When it comes to content, you want to provide content that your CUSTOMERS want to see. They want to see quality, valuable content that’s of importance to them. That content may be a video file showing how to put together your product, which is perfectly fine.

Quality writing is a whole different scenario. When you write a well-rounded article or Web site copy that has emotional content, uses the five senses, and describes the product with such eloquence that lures the reader into a dance with words–now THAT is the difference between quality content that will float to the top of the engines and bland content that does nothing for the reader OR the rankings.

You can’t get quality writing from an article bank membership site (IMHO), because those writers aren’t going to put the passion into the writing that’s needed. A good writer can achieve passion for virtually every topic once he/she understands the topic. But I don’t believe it will come with an article bank. What are the qualifications of the writers? What time frame are they working under? Are the members really rewriting the articles like they’re supposed to be doing? Feels very spammy and worthless to me.

Hire a REAL writer, or a aspiring writer, like creative writers from a local university. Hire someone with a passion for writing. The difference in the quality of writing will be amazing.

Robin