Content is the foundation of the SEO pyramid

In the current economic climate, to suggest that a pyramid is a model of stability invites derision. Wasn’t Bernie Madoff’s giant scam a “pyramid scheme” of sorts? And doesn’t that provide an eerie study in miniature of the global financial crisis itself? So take your pyramids and get out of here. A pyramid scheme, however, starts at the top, with a handful of participants recruiting new members, who in turn have to recruit ever more members in exponentially expanding layers.

Whether you believe they were the handiwork of ancient Egyptians or aliens, we can all agree that the actual pyramids were not constructed from the top down. Rather they started from the bottom and worked up, and the pyramids have lasted a good few thousand years so far. And doesn’t that remind us - as the bishop in the radio studio would have it – of the role of content in SEO? It is the foundation upon which all other work must be overlaid.

You won’t get links without good content to link to. Social media promotion needs content to be effective. Keywords need to feature in content. Any of these techniques without a base of good solid content beneath will come crashing down to earth at the speed of a Wall Street trader. And as we all know, the volume of a pyramid is equal to the area of the base times the height over three...This is probably stretching the metaphor way beyond the original intentions of those who have used it before, and for that we apologise. But the point is, the more content you have, the bigger, stronger and deeper the foundations of your edifice and the higher you can build. You have more pages to promote, more points of entry for visitors, more material to interest search engines, more opportunities to optimise to your keywords, more room to establish yourself as an authority in your area. And quality content that people will want to read will endure over time. Admittedly, not for thousands of years, but investment in content and SEO have been demonstrated time and again to be much more cost effective in generating traffic in the long term than spending on PPC.

The key to building something that is going to last, rather than collapse, is to start with the foundations. And content is the foundation of the SEO pyramid.

By Gerry White and Alan Boyce