Google announced today that it will be investing over $100,000,000 in quality content for YouTube.

As mentioned in an earlier Raidious post featured on SocialMediaToday.com, directly from Matt Cutts at SXSW, Google has admitted time and again that SEO is about one thing – delivering quality, original content. It is the best way to rank your web property, the end – not link building, or other gray-hat SEO tricks that try to game the system. High quality original content always has, does, and always will help you win rank.

That’s what SEO is – it is the optimization of content.

It’s one thing to hear Matt Cutts say this to a room packed full of people at the biggest digital marketing conference on the planet. It is another for Google to back up that statement by investing significantly in its own properties.

Google is making a $100,000,000 dollar bet on high quality, original content, because guess what – Google knows it can’t lose.

One thing that YouTube is that Netflix and Hulu are not is a search engine. In fact, YouTube at one point was the second largest search engine in the world, behind Google, and it is still by far the first-choice destination for any user looking for video on a given topic. The fact that Google is investing like this, in high quality original content, should be the mother of all clues to anyone who wants to rank a website – you should be spending your money on high quality original content. Because that is exactly what Google is doing for its own properties.

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Can a privately held, for-profit company be trusted to act in the public good? If you use the multinational banks or energy companies as examples, then the answer by most measures would be a resounding “no.”

But what if that company is Google?

The company whose brand image is “Don’t be evil” has placed itself at the center of a geopolitical debate, and print and broadcast news and blogging outlets are awash with opinions. Issues of weapons, international trade, and human rights aside (not that any are small issues), it seems the new cold war is an information freeze.

When Google opened up virtual and physical shop in China in 2006, many questioned the company’s motives. Google itself championed social change, maintaining that despite its acquiescence to government-mandated censoring of search results, for the citizens of China some access was better than none. Now following a series of hacking attacks on Gmail accounts and other Google services in China, the company is refusing to censor its results and threatening to pull out of the country entirely.

The always spot-on Farhad Manhoo has a great article about the issue on Slate, so I won’t get into the details here. But all the reading I’ve done only leaves me with the single burning question:

Can a private company be trusted or expected to succeed where governments, the United Nations, and citizen activists have not?

Amnesty International reports that China “has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world.” Those imprisoned are accused of offenses such as signing petitions, disseminating health information, and planning to form pro-democracy groups.

The commodity internet was formed with one explicit purpose in mind: to connect people to each other through the exchange of information. Much as the strategies of the American and French revolutions were fleshed out in coffee houses, the internet is a meeting place where ideas are exchanged and the merits of these ideas are discussed. More than that, the internet is an always-on source of the latest information on natural disasters, political news, and public health issues.

If average citizens seeking to find out about disease outbreaks, discuss government reform, or just learn about the world around them are subject to imprisonment, what then is the role of the provider of the conduit for this information? Companies should respect the laws and regulations of any country in which they do business, but what if that business is itself intellectual freedom and exchange of information?

What are the geopolitical ramifications of Google’s words and actions? If history is any indication, China will not bow to pressure from the world community based on this issue alone. But what if Google’s protest and threats are simply activism on a broad scale, designed to use their enormous financial leverage and highly favorable brand standing in order to focus attention on China’s well-documented human rights abuses?

Will the world take notice? Will the world care? Will two guys who ran an indexing server in their Stanford dorm rooms suddenly find themselves emissaries of political and human rights reform?

In the entertaining and exhaustive corporate biography, “The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture” (John Battelle, 2006), Google co-founder Larry Page describes his fascination with inventor Nikola Tesla. Tesla, despite research and inventions that laid the groundwork for–among others–wireless communication, solar cells, X rays, and the modern power grid, is usually overshadowed by competitors like Thomas Edison.

In one illuminating passage, Page describes his desire from the age of 12 to invent things that mattered to people:

I realized Tesla was the greatest inventor, but he didn’t accomplish as much as he should have. I realized I wanted to invent things, but I also wanted to change the world. I wanted to get them out there, get them into people’s hands so they can use them, because that’s what really matters.

Page wanted to change the world at age 12. Now Google wants to change the world. I don’t know if it’s possible, but very few have managed to stop Google yet.

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Image via Wikipedia

Many people, even those in the industry, are not aware that search engine algorithms change on a weekly or monthly basis.

Let’s face it: we’re all trying to find ways to game the search system. We naturally want people to find us and our products via search.

But by churning out blog posts loaded with keywords, are we just spinning our wheels?

We are if we’re ignoring one important fact: we write content for customers (you know, flesh-and-blood people), not search robots.

If you’ve ever seen any of the Dyson vacuum cleaner commercials, you should recognize that their methodology is simple: the inventor/CEO talks about the product in plain language, and demonstrates the product’s usefulness. Their vacuums are described in ways that emphasize their differences, and plays up the fact that they were created as a means of solving old problems with new ideas.

Are their sweepers more expensive? Maybe. Do they know you already own a perfectly good vacuum? Most assuredly. But their pitch is aimed at you, the person, and the complaints you have about the status quo of keeping your carpets clean.

Organic search and links operate on a similar principle. By ONLY loading your content with keywords, your site becomes optimized for robots who have no idea why your product is better. They only know that your site—and all the others selling similar products—is relevant to certain keywords.

By providing real-world examples of the utility of your products and services, and keeping in mind that it’s humans who buy them, you not only draw in more customers but optimize your site for organic search almost as a by-product.

So differentiate yourself: write for people, not for robots.

Image via Wikipedia

Search engine optimization is no longer about gaming the system by stuffing loosely related (or completely unrelated) metadata keywords into a site’s header. Search algorithms are finely tuned to prioritize a site’s actual written content over almost all else.

What does this mean? It means that search engines are built to “read” a site as a human would. An outstanding model to follow for web content writing comes from elementary school.

The old “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them” structure you learned in fourth grade holds true.

The first paragraph of a page or article gives a summary of the entire piece. The body paragraphs contain the relevant information with examples, data, lists, and quotes/testimonials. The final paragraph is a conclusion on what has just been read.

And let’s not forget the importance of proper spelling and grammar; while Google may not care about good spelling, it helps to keep the “search spiders as humans” concept in mind. Would you trust the New York Times if it were full of spelling mistakes?

All too often the job of creating web content is left to web developers, sales managers, or even the secretary. Looking again at the Times, do the Editor in Chief, Ad Sales Manager, or receptionist have a hand in reporting? Or is the job of finely crafting news and editorial content up to the journalists who have expertise in not only their reporting field but also in writing about those topics?

Finally, remember peer reviews? Reading and commenting on other relevant blogs is a great way to not only promote your own site, but also get other folks reading and commenting on yours. Easy-to-understand content will help others in the process of vetting your information by commenting and linking to your site.

So it’s not just important to have great content; putting your site out there for review/comments is a great way to promote and get links.

If your company lacks the resources to hire content producers with an intimate knowledge of the Chicago Manual of Style, at the very least you can remember your elementary school compositions and keep it short, simple, and relevant. You will undoubtedly find your site is rewarded with the A+ grade of increased search ranking.

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