Content is Dead... Long live Content!!

Well the saying has all but been worn out now - Content is King! Okay, so there I've said it. But, it remains as true today as ever... if not more so (yes, you can have truer statements).

While previously the actual content had to be very keyword focused this is not quite the case any more. Sure the content needs to be good, but no longer do you have to focus on keyword density, stuffing your page until it read like a badly translated DIY instruction document.

SEO is Rocket Science hits on the fact contextual links are the best. We already knew that (well, we did, didn't we?), proving that while links are important it's the context or the content that surrounds them that is really important.

Some may argue that links are the most important ranking feature. Others the content of a website. I would say that they are as reliant on each other as they are important. Good quality content will generate links and links to useless content won't guarantee rankings.

Google Code

Telling Google what to index might not be a figment of webmasters imagination for that much longer. I recently came across a few lines of code explaining that you can tell Google not to index parts of your page. This could prove to be quite useful.

Don't index word:
fish <!--googleoff: index-->shark
<!--googleon: index-->mackerel

Don't use link text to describe target page:
<!--googleoff: anchor--><A href=sharks_rugby.html>
shark </A> <!--googleon: anchor-->

Don't use for snippet:
<!--googleoff: snippet-->Come to the fair!
<!--googleon: snippet-->

Don't index any:
<!--googleoff: all-->Come to the fair!
<!--googleon: all-->

Now I'm not sure if any of this works just yet. I'm still testing, but I imagine that Google will for the most part ignore these comments. We know that the Google bot pretty much tries to read all the code on a page including scripts. But if the snippet comment works at least we might be able to use a description that might be useful.

Watch this space...