Google’s Panda update created a whirlwind storm. It sent marketers scrambling looking for answers. It is no secret. Read any article writing guide and most likely it will emphasize SEO techniques and tactics.
Up until now, SEO has been the dominant driving force behind search engine results. That is changing. Let me introduce User Content Optimization (UCO). UCO is the new kid on the block, formerly known as quality content.
Why would anyone query a search engine? Common sense would tell you that the searcher was looking for information, for quality content. All he wants is an answer to a question. He may be searching for something to buy or perhaps some entertainment. Regardless, he is looking for information.
Tangled Buzzwords
Yet, how many times have you made a query and found an organic list of sites wanting to blatantly sell you something? If you have had my experience, then you have seen those billboard webpages many times. Billboard webpages have lots of color, lots of hype, but no substance, no quality content. They are a web of tangled buzzwords suspiciously meant to attract mechanical spiders in the hopes of snaring an unsuspecting human with its alluring brilliance.
It is no secret that there are two opposing factions in the article marketing world, those that promote SEO internet marketing and those that promote quality content. Does it have to be one or the other?
Article writing guides tend to emphasize SEO techniques and methods over UCO. Common sense should tell you that both play important roles in article marketing. You may favor one over the other, but using both, informative quality content optimization and search engine optimization can outrank your competitors.
Football and Article Marketing
It seems to me that if you decide to be serious about playing football you should know the rules of the game and if you aspire to professionalism, then you must not only play by the rules you must also play on a regulation football field. There is also a wide range of unwritten rules called sportsmanship that you abide by.
Professional football, as an example, is an extremely physical and very competitive sport. But the unwritten law of sportsmanship denies a player the use of illegal drugs or the blatant use of physical violence to gain a competitive edge, in other words unsportsmanlike conduct is not condoned. It is not always explicitly written in the rule books, but you know it when you see it.
The game of article marketing is no different.
In one vast sweep, with one block of filtering code Google brought the industry to its knees. Websites crumbled. Giants in the page rank race toppled. Why, because many players were unsportsmanlike. They were not playing by the unwritten rules.
Article marketing is self-explanatory. Articles convey information. Articles inform. In its broadest sense the conveyed information is knowledge in various forms like solutions, general facts, news, comparisons, or opinion. Articles convey content optimization.
The other half of that label, marketing, promotes products or ideas with the intent to sell those products or ideas. In other words, information is used to sell product or ideas. Marketing is a much broader term than article. Marketing includes SEO, syndication, back linking and many other tactics.
The operative word in article marketing is not marketing, but article. Article defines the primary type of marketing that is to be conducted. It is not hard to understand.
In keeping with the football analogy, think of the football as the product. The idea is to move the product up the field of page ranks to the coveted goal line of position one page one and ultimately to make a sale.
Some players decided that the marketing ingredient of the article marketing game excluded the use of carefully crafted plays of information to reach the goal line.
Imagine a football team that ignores the written and unwritten rules and that decides that they need only pick up the ball and by brute force without paragraphic downs, they cross the goal line and expect a reward. Luckily, that does not happen in football.
User Content Optimization
User Content Optimization (UCO) internet marketing will soon become the new buzzword, right up there with SEO internet marketing. In fact, it may even receive equal billing. Why?
Because UCO is so much easier to learn, there are no special HTML codes to learn, no schemes to outwit the search engines, and no unscrupulous tactics to compete against. It requires only that the author provide informative and relevant articles to his readers. No extra bells and whistles or secret formulas are required.
It is not that SEO internet marketing will fall by the wayside. SEO will always be an integral part of the article marketer’s methods. With the UCO tactic, you write quality content, quality information. The semantic relationships flow naturally and the web searcher gets his information and the search engines reward your efforts with page one position one rankings.
Any article writing guide for internet marketing should emphasize SEO and UCO equally.
It may seem that I am touting an altruistic scenario, not really, Google is on my side. As search engines become more sophisticated in their semantic searching algorithms, the emphasis on content will become more dominant. They are not there yet, but they are moving in that direction. Is Google on your side?
