Why Content?
Have you ever stumbled upon a website that was visually stimulating with content that was so interesting that you had to continue reading? While after reading you realize it’s a business located within miles of where you live and never knew it existed? Or, you searched online specifically for a product or service, clicked on their link and became disappointed at what you saw?
For the fist part of that question: A friend told me about a new restaurant that opened up in the town where I live. Being a person of curiosity, I typed in the name of the restaurant in the Google search bar and there it was. I must say the website is visually stunning, simple and to the point. A couple days later I found myself at that restaurant picking up an order that I had placed over the phone. I was glad to discover the food exceeded my expectations. Plus the website portrayed the quality of the product.
Weeks later, I was introduced to the person who designed the website for the restaurant. They were talking about how their team has been helping businesses over the past few years. Some of things they mentioned perked my curiosity, so after that meeting I went home and typed in “restaurants in(my town)”. Can you guess what I did not see? Hint: The restaurant my friend told me about. How can a team of people who claim to be the best in the area for helping businesses get discovered on the Internet miss the most important key element?
I visited the website again to investigate and right clicked on the home page to view the source code. It was then I discovered the site was made using a free website builder platform where the content is hidden inside widgets. If there is one thing I have learned that will make the difference of getting results on search engines, it’s this. . . CONTENT IS KEY, period! It’s where the “Rubber Meets the Road”. It’s been told over and over again, yet people try to get fancy with a neat design to “WOW” us over. If I can be perfectly honest, a person should never claim to be a web designer until they can build a website from scratch. I’m talking a blank canvas. Straight up HTML, PHP, Javascript, and CSS code. No widgets, no plugins, everything from scratch. Otherwise, your just a graphic designer. Enough said about that, and I hope I didn’t piss anybody off with my opinion.
Here’s why content is so important.
THE SEARCH BOTS ONLY SEE WORDS. If your content is buried somewhere inside of javascript widgets and/or images with no “alt tags” the search bots will never find you. They will see the “meta tags” providing that they are there. However, if they can’t see the content on the page that explains the who, what, where, how and why of your business, your site will be skipped by the search bots. If somewhere on your web page states “Mexican restaurant in (my town, state)” for example, the search bot will most likely find and display your site in the results for someone who searched for “Mexican restaurant in (my town, state)”. It’s that simple. There are ways to increase the odds of ranking higher on search results, but that’s other topic for another time.
There’s more to web design than cool graphics, pretty pictures, and a nice layout. You need to understand what goes on behind the scenes. Writing content may not be as fun as creating graphic design, but no one will be able to see your talented art skills, taste your great food, or learn more about your service if they can’t find you.
alt tags: An alt tag, also known as “alt attribute” and “alt description,” is an HTML attribute applied to image tags to provide a text alternative for search engines.
meta tags: A meta tag is an HTML tag containing information for search engines about a specific website. Meta tags contain keywords or phrases alerting search engines of a website’s content to be included in search results for users requesting related information.