I suspect everyone in the SEO Park City community is well aware that content is not just content. What I mean by this is that the purpose of on line content is not simply to convey information or to entertain. We have previously discussed that the content of one website can be used to optimize the content of another website through the use of referring links. But in order for content to optimize itself (so to speak) it must also conform to certain rules and criteria that will attract the watchful eyes of the search engine web crawlers. For example, the content should contain a certain number of words, a certain ratio of key words to the number of total word, a picture and many other things if it wants to climb its way to the top of a search engine’s listings in response to a search. This means that content must be in a sense more than its content if it wants to attract the right attention.

Attracting the right attention on the internet is a primary goal. I say it is “a” primary goal and not “the” primary goal because the content should contain some information or entertainment value, otherwise why would its creator want it to attract attention to itself? Even spam type content or content primarily designed to optimize the content of another website must contain at least a mustard seed of information or entertainment value in order for it to attract viewers in significant numbers. I suppose it is possible for content to contain zero information or entertainment value to any possible reader but this would probably be far outside the norm.

There is the sense that this state of affairs is somehow not as it should be. When I talk to other people about what I do for a living (that is, writing search engine optimized content) they often react as if what I am doing is not worth the time I spend on it or that it is somehow making the world a worse place. I suppose in an ideal universe SEO Park City on line content would be written purely for the information it conveys or the entertainment it provides. Moreover, in this ideal universe search engines would figure out a way to list results according to their actual relevance and not according to the results of an algorithm designed to approximate relevance.

I am by no means writing this post to defend the current state of affairs. It is what it is and I see my role as a person trying to navigate these waters. In other words, I did not make the waters. I am simply trying to survive and (dare I say) thrive in this environment. It is not ideal but it is the reality in which we (i.e., me and the people I describe my job to) find ourselves. For this reason, it is my humble opinion that any content creator who is struggling with this sort of issue to let it go.