The importance of relevant content

The words that make up your web pages should be precise, informative, and relevant to your industry, product line, or service. The “relevant” part is sometimes overlooked in the process of trying to sound good.

Relevant content has become a hot topic of discussion in recent years. The explosion of new internet-based businesses that burst onto the scene between 2001 and 2005 created a vacuum where quality, relevant content was difficult to find. Hobbyists and entrepreneurs were just winging it and putting anything on their websites just to get them online. Internet marketing companies and SEO professionals were buying or producing substandard articles and content for link farms that cheapened the overall web experience.

In the middle of the decade, when things started to stabilize and the expansion of the network slowed down a bit, a movement towards the search for better quality content began. The equations, formulas, and algorithms used to measure a site’s credibility and determine its page rank began to change. More attention was paid to editorial guidelines and content relevancy and less weight was given to high number of backlinks.

A few more years passed, technology changed and the average consumer began to be more educated and selective. The novelty of “surfing the web” wore off and users began demanding better and more informative content. Article directories raised their standards and search engines began to consider Quality Score as a more determining factor for page rank. From the beginning of 2007 to the end of 2008, the rules of internet marketing changed completely and the web returned to being what it was meant to be: a trusted source of information on any topic you can think of.

There are still many websites today that have inaccurate or irrelevant information, but you won’t see any of them rise to the top of page one. Relevant content is considered the most important element now and websites, directories, or wikis that don’t contain relevant content fall very quickly on those search pages that you never bother to look at. Those with false or misleading information may not show up in a search.

In the 1990s, when the Internet was taking hold, those who used it were interested in sharing information and communicating with prospects and customers from all over the world. The exchange was open and the Internet was seen as a tool to build lasting relationships based on mutual cooperation. Greed derailed it for a few years. The web is definitely a place where most business will eventually get done, but we won’t be able to get it done right without relevant content. It’s still a work in progress, but we’re definitely heading in the right direction.