Ask anybody who is involved in online marketing or SEO and they will tell you that “content is king”.

It is, and here’s why…

Google, and other search engines, rank your website against a plethora of other websites that are largely the same. There is hardly such thing as a niche any more, so you really have to do whatever it takes to stand out from the hundreds of other websites serving the same content as you.

Imagine you sell branded kitchenware - how are you going to differentiate yourself from your competitors? Of course, every business model is unique to an extent, but real-world motivations such as “operate a loyalty scheme” or “offer outstanding customer service” won’t make you rank higher.

Google needs to see you making a pro-active effort to get people to your website. How does Google know how to order it’s results? What makes one website stand above another? The answer is in the content.

Google’s goal is to please it’s users by serving them the most relevant content to their search phrase. The point of this? If the users are happy with their results, they will keep using Google.

So in spirit of this, you also need to please your users. You cannot simply put a product up on your site and expect it to rank well - you need to offer more. How about trying something like this:

• Write a review of the product that is completely unique and has additional information to your competitors
• Take your own photography
• Open the product up to user-reviews - these are guaranteed to gives users a real life insight into their potential purchase
• If the product is worthy, use the wider social spectrum to drum up interest. Think blogging, Twitter and Facebook

But this is not all. Many companies are now offering a blog, but it’s also fair to say that most are not using it correctly (if at all). You want to give both the search engines and users a reason to re-visit your website. If you maintain a blog that offers genuinely interesting content then people will return and even better, may share it’s content with their network (Facebook friends, Twitter followers, Digg friends etc).

So, when promoting a website online, always consider what makes your pages stand out from the rest. The answer is in original, regularly updated content.

Note: I cannot take credit for the epically bad image above, these guys can though :)