There are many companies who still think that once they have created the website, users will automatically access it. A lot of companies start a website with a strong ambition of “let’s make it a cool design” or “let’s make the website that is easy for users to use”, but not really realizing how many number of accesses will this website have nor what ranking it will appear on the search results on Google search engine for the users to able to find your website. As the users only visit the website that shows on the top 2pages at max on the search results, having your website on the top page of search results is very important.
When the Internet came out new to this world, the number of companies that had websites was still limited, and it was normal that the website showed on the top page of search results. Nowadays, “1 company, 1 website” has become typical, the ranking of search results becoming the attribute for users to select what is a good website and what is not. With Google’s vast and complex algorithms, Google categorizes the vast number of web pages in the search index, and instantly displays the most relevant  and useful information that users are looking for. This affects the results in ranking of search engines. In order to show your website on the top ranking, the most important aspect that Google determines the ranking is by how useful the information and content is for the users who are searching. Google search algorithms consider various factors such as search keywords, page relevancy, usefulness of the content, updated content and many more. All of these factors are important in content SEO.

Content SEO is to optimize the search results by regularly updating the website with high-quality content (the part corresponding to the blog article). However, it is not just a matter of writing an article and uploading it on the website. If you upload the content SEO without knowing it deeply, you may have troubles such as “The number of accesses does not increase even though it is updated” and “It is not displayed at the top of the search results”.
So what kind of content is displayed at the top of the search results? In this article, I would like to explain exactly what content is highly evaluated in “content SEO” from the perspective of Google and the user.

What is content SEO？

Content SEO is a strategy to attract search engine traffic on a website by creating content. Google determines the ranking of your website on their search result page by various factors.

By regularly updating articles/blogs on the website that contain useful information that search users are looking for, and enriching the content, these will be the key aspects in determination of making the website display on the top search results.
Google ranks websites by crawling (the program which follows links and crawls all websites) with all kinds of scrutiny and unique algorithms. It is very important to understand what the evaluation criteria from Google are evolving in order to create content.

“Content SEO” = It is important that the content rating is high from both Google and users perspectives

Now let me introduce the advantages and disadvantages that should be understood when starting content SEO that aims to display high-ranking search results.

Content SEO advantages

Advantage１：Costs can be reduce as there is no need to spend for advertising costs

Content SEO is a possible measure if you can publish high-quality articles (content) on your website. Search advertisements that display websites at the top and banner advertisements that encourage access will incur costs each time. On the other hand, content SEO is a strategy to display your website on the top of search results by organic search without using any advertising costs, so it can be implemented if there is a person in charge of creating articles. If you can assign a person to create an article, you don’t have to outsource article creation or hire a writer, so it can be started without any additional cost. Of course, if you are a person in charge or a professional writer who has some knowledge of SEO, you can expect more useful articles, so you need to keep that point firmly when assigning an article creator. Unlike advertising costs, where continuous investment is inevitable, if you can create an article, you will not incur continuous costs, so costs can be kept down.

Advantage２：The effect of attracting customers is maintained for a long time

Another biggest advantage is the sustainability of the effect of attracting customers. Website customer attraction measures such as search advertisements and banner advertisements will naturally drop their effectiveness once the advertisements are stopped. Content SEO, on the other hand, will continue to attract potential customers from search engines if articles are posted regularly on the website. In contrast to advertising measures that attract customers in a short period of time, content SEO is characterized by being able to maintain stable customer attraction for a long period of time.

Advantage３：The more content you accumulate, the more it becomes your company’s assets

Content SEO measures become the assets of the entire site by accumulating contents. By enriching the content evaluated by Google and users on the site, the majority of the inflow will be from users who are looking for that information, not from advertisements, so the numbers of sales qualified opportunities inquiries will increase. Advertising is effective if you want instant results but requires the investment in advertisement to maintain the performance. On the other hand, by enriching the content, the site itself will be displayed at the top of the search results in the long term without using advertisements, so it will be possible to contribute to attracting customers in the long term continuously

Advantage４：Increase brand credibility and awareness

You will need to create and provide content for the users, assuming the information that users are looking for. It is very important to satisfy the users and make them feel, “This company will provide content that will solve my problems”, “This site has useful information”. In addition, by always including the company logo or company name on the content page of the site, it will be possible to raise awareness from users who visit many times.

Advantage５：Since it is highly spreadable, it can be expected to attract customers from non-search users

By placing an SNS share button in an article, users who highly value the article are more likely to spread to other social media platforms. In addition to the inflow from search engines, we can expect to attract customers from social media, which will lead to increased awareness of products and services and acquisition of new customers without investing in advertisements.

Disadvantages of SEO Content

Disadvantage１：It takes time for the website to appear because there is no immediate effect

Content SEO does not have the immediate effect of rapidly increasing the number of accesses as soon as an article is created and uploaded on the web. This is because it takes time for Google to crawl and evaluates a huge number of websites, selects the sites to be displayed at the top, and ranks the search results. If you have just launched a website and it’s new, Google will judge it as a “website that cannot be trusted yet”, so it is important to regularly upload content and gain the trust of Google. By disseminating useful content “continuously”, if Google evaluates that “this site continuously disseminates useful information to users and contributes to users”, it will be ranked high in the search results.

Disadvantage２：It takes effort and time to create high quality content

Content SEO is a measure in which it is important to create useful articles. Since it is not completed after writing it once, it is necessary to continuously create articles. If you create it in-house without outsourcing, you need to assign a writer in charge to maintain the continuity of article updates.

Disadvantage 3：Requires regular maintenance

It is necessary to continuously create articles, and once uploaded content, regular update work is required. What this means is that Google is making daily improvements to providing useful information to its users and updating the rules for determining search rankings. If you leave the article as it is because it is displayed at the top of the search results, Google will judge that “information has not been updated = users are not looking for this information” and the ranking will gradually drop. The ranking also depends on whether the user actually accessed the content and whether they were satisfied with reading the content. If what users want fluctuates, so does Google’s rating. As a result, articles need to be updated on a regular basis to meet the changing needs of users and the changing criteria of Google. You will need to carry out regular maintenance by analyzing what kind of content is most useful to users and leading to improvement.

Articles highly rated by Google and users

First of all, when implementing content SEO,you need to understand that all articles are evaluated by both Google and users. Google constantly scrutinizes with its own algorithms and aims to provide users with useful and relevant information. Google search engines are also evolving day by day to meet the ever-changing search needs.

Understand Google

In the first place, Google will explain why it is necessary to continue to scrutinize and evaluate the websites that are displayed at the top of the search results on a daily basis with the fundamental Google business model.

It is important to create an article while considering the evaluation of both Google and users when disseminating content.

Understand the users

Now let’s understand the user’s perspective. It is necessary to design the content creation policy after understanding the points when to use the search engine and what they want to use the search engine. The users who search engines always have a purpose, whether that is information, answers to your questions, interesting articles and so on. The content that can provide useful information for the keywords that the user searches for is the content that the user is looking for. It means that the quality of the content is important, whether the user is satisfied or not after browsing. The criteria for determining the quality of content are the time spent on the page and the rate of migration within the site. This performance should be analyzed using Google Analytics. We also support Google Analytics services, so please feel free to contact us. Another metric that users rate is whether the site is ranked high in search results or not. When the website is displayed in the top ranking it means that Google trusts this content which means users desirable contents.

What is Google’s philosophy of a trusted website?
Important website elements to be evaluated by Google are the following Google principles.

1. Transparency
2. Consistency
3. Authority
4. Neutrality
5. Objectivity
6. Public interest

Transparency is the shedding light on the process. If the process is disclosed in detail, it is evaluated as a site with no lies or hidden facts = a site with highly transparent content. For example, just posting a photo of Before and After before makeup does not tell you if the cosmetic was really used, and Google will downgrade it because it is not transparent. The more photos of the process between Before and After, the more credible content the user will find. From that perspective, video is the most transparent and content that Google likes.

Consistency means that details of contents’ philosophy and policies are consistent. If the idea or logic is inconsistent among multiple contents and it is judged that this website is uncertain about what it is trying to convey, it will be evaluated as a disadvantageous site for users and the search ranking will not be rated as top.

Authority is whether the industry or the authority of the road supervises the content without disguise. Google considers the content to be reliable and good for users if it is clearly stated that it involves a professional on the road, an authoritative person that more people know, rather than a solution that does not know who is saying it.

Neutrality is not biased toward one-sided opinions, but whether it is neutral or objective. Even content that proposes one solution is evaluated as highly neutral content by introducing opinions and data from various positions.

Objectivity is the evaluation axis of whether the content is guaranteed to be objective. It is important to ensure authority and neutrality, and to have objectivity in the proposals and solutions in the content. For example, writing an article while disclosing the result data of quantitative surveys such as consumer questionnaires and qualitative surveys such as group interviews will greatly improve the evaluation of objectivity.

The public interest is the perspective of whether the website is in a position that only it should be. If the content is just to sell your company’s products and services, it will not be evaluated for public interest and it will be difficult to be displayed at the top of the search results. In addition, it is also an important factor for Google to make inquiries properly on the site, specify the contact point and transmission method of complaints, and “properly respond to users even if something goes wrong”.

Effective content writing flow

Now that you understand the content that Google and users rate, let’s understand the flow of actual content creation.
The figure below shows an effective article production flow.
First, we will conduct a keyword survey, create content that matches the search intent, and even after the article is published, we will continue to use PDCA such as effectiveness verification and rewriting.

First is the target/objective setting. You will need to decide what kind of target you will deliver the content to and what kind of goal you will want to achieve. Since this part determines the direction and results of content SEO measures, you will firmly clarify the purpose, target users, and set content patterns.
For example, if you set a goal to increase inquiries, consider who the target you want to inquire about, and whether that target knows your company’s products and services in the first place.
If your company’s service is a “solution,” we will dig deeper from the perspective of what kind of solution you are providing, and clarify it as “IT solution,” “accounting software,” “production management tool,” etc. However, the term “solution” is different for some people who are not interested and for some people, depending on the category of the solution. For example, if you are searching for “IT solutions” below would be the common demand.

• Want to purchase an “IT solution”
• Want to compare other companies of “IT solutions”

It is necessary to identify the user’s interests and desired information, such as investigating the merits and demerits of “IT solutions”. Creating the content that each target user wants is important for successful content SEO.

Next, we will identify and prioritize the keywords and benchmark sites that we aim for in keyword design. Here, we define what keywords and categories the target user is searching for, and determine the priority depending on whether it is a potential user or an actual user. After that, we will decide the content to be created based on the keywords. For example, we will organize by assuming the user’s search intention from the keywords in our products and services as follows.

The important thing here is to make a firm guess at what the user really wants to know (the question the user is reading and having). By clarifying this part, it will be possible to create content that answers your questions.

Next is the formulation of production rules. By deciding the rules that will be the guidelines for production before planning the content, you can create the content smoothly, so you need to decide before you start planning. When creating content, it’s important to set the ultimate goal of making users happy that they’ve solved the problem after viewing the article. The three points to be done at the planning stage are as follows.

What are content goals and element settings?

For example, if the content that contains keywords of “production management tool”

• Understand the criteria for selecting production control tools
• Understand the production management tool that suits your company
• Can imagine the introduction

Those above points will be the final goals. We will organize the elements necessary to achieve that final goal. In the above case, points listed below should be created in one content.

• Necessity (benefits) of production management tools
• Effects and examples (case studies) of production management tools
• Comparison of production control tools, procedure
• Understanding the current situation and organizing issues that occur due to lack of production control

In creating story design, based on the elements necessary to achieve the goal, we will create the story of the article while well summarizing the answers and solutions.
The purpose of site operation is not only to acquire the number of accesses and page views, but also to set “I want users to purchase products and services” and “I want sales qualified inquiries” for users who visit the site. This story design is a particularly important process.

Finally, creating titles and headlines is an important factor in deciding whether or not a user wants to access them at a glance, so it is necessary to carefully consider the title and headline when designing content. It’s also one of the important indicators for Google to judge the content of the website, so it’s not just a matter of giving a title that has an impact. If Google evaluates that the content content and the keyword are highly related because the title contains the keyword, it is more likely to be displayed at the top of the search results.

For example, the bad title example and good example when aiming with the keyword “production control system” are as follows.

We can understand that both titles are aimed at targets that are considering introducing the keyword of “production management”, but since the bad example is not a keyword such as “production management system”, Google can not judge that it is the content of the production management system. Since the ranking of search results is evaluated by the difference in title, it is necessary to keep in mind to create a title that firmly includes the targeted keyword.

After setting the content creation rules and planning in this way, we will create the content. Even after creating the content and uploading it on the web, it is important to update and re-write the content at regular basis. What is missing for the user by turning PDCA while verifying the effect? What element is missing for Google to evaluate? It is extremely important to update the content that is evaluated while thinking carefully about the both perspectives of users and Google

Summary

We have introduced the importance of evaluation from the Google perspective and user perspective, which are necessary for creating content. Google always puts user convenience first and is constantly evolving, and it is our mission to provide search users with content that puts users first. This is because it is a business form that is used by users and earns profits by providing the information that users want. In order to be displayed at the top of the search results and to succeed in content SEO, it is necessary to constantly update the content that considers the user.
If you have any problems such as launching websites in Thailand, Malaysia, or Asian countries, but the number of accesses does not increase, or you do not get inquiries, we recommend that you start content SEO. We support digital marketing in Thailand, Malaysia and Asian countries.
If you have any concerns about your current situation, please feel free to contact us!