Quality content matters more than ever

A few weeks ago, the search engine marketing firm iProspect published the findings of their study in "search engine user behaviour" which revealed a definite increase in the importance of websites getting top natural search results.

This is what I was referring to with my natural web for humans comment, on this blog as well as the original Sitepoint discussion thread.

The recent iProspect research, conducted by Jupiter Research concludes that most users of search engines expect to find what they are looking for on the first page of the results, with three pages being the patience limit:

  • 62% of search engine users click on a search result within the first page of results, and a full 90% of users click on a result within the first three pages of search results.
  • 36% of search engine users believe that the companies whose websites are returned at the top of the search results are the top brands in their field.
  • 41% of search engine users who continue their search when not finding what they seek, will change engines or change their search term if they don"t find what they seek on the first page of search results.
  • 88% of search engine users who continue their search when not finding what they seek, will change engines or change their search term if they don"t find what they seek on the first three pages of search results.
  • 82% of search engine users re-launch an unsuccessful search using the same search engine as they used for their initial search, but add more keywords to refine the subsequent search.

That last point is really important as it shows a substantial increase in the number of users who have learnt to search much more effectively than in previous years. Users have grasped the fact that generic, single-word searches are almost always useless, no matter what search engine they're using.

As users are obviously getting more search-savvy, businesses clearly need to start targeting original longer keyword phrases, so they can be more easily found.

Let's say there are 100 hotels in Tasmania and they all have a website. Let's also say that you're responsible for one of those websites. What would you do to try and get your website to the top of the results if a user searched for "Tasmania hotels", for instance? This is where an "SEO expert" could come in, usually with a swag of goodies, and attempt to manipulate one or more pages, so it ranks higher with a search engine, for that phrase.

Which is exactly the wrong thing to do.

As the search engines evolve to accomodate smarter and more experienced users, this technique is fast becoming obsolete. After all, if there are 100 hotels in Tasmania, and each one has a website, what is a user trying to achieve when they use the search phrase "Tasmania hotels"? Common sense and experience tell the user that they need to be more specific with their objectives. The above statistics from iProspect prove that users are in fact doing just that.

Quality content is still the answer. It's always been the most important aspect of SEO but it's never been more important than now.

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About the author

Ivan's mugshotI'm Ivan Lutrov and I'm the owner of Lutrov Interactive. I have 25 years of experience producing interactive work and I create cost effective business websites that are simple, engaging and easy to use. I practice what I preach and I say what I really think, even if it's sometimes not what you want to hear. Subscribe to the Lutrov Interactive feed via RSS and follow me on Twitter.