Great content definitely makes your job as a marketer or search engine optimization or SEO specialist easier.  For example, having good content would ensure that blogs and other sites would naturally link to your pages.  People would also share pages that they find interesting, educational and informative.

So what should you keep in mind when it comes to content?  Here are four things that you should remember:

1. Publish keyword-related content.

Your content should match what people are looking for.  There is no sense in creating content that people do not need.  Remember that you can create the best content in the world and it will still amount to nothing if nobody gets to read it.

For example, if you write about Brooklyn’s cultural diversity, somebody who is not familiar with Brooklyn will not be able to see your page if you do not include keywords such as New York or New York City.  In the same manner, if you have something on the treatment of halitosis, people looking for information on bad breath might not even see your page.

There are many tools available online to help you come up with a list of possible keywords to write for.  Check out the following:

After you find out the keywords you want to target, you should always use these keywords in your content.

2. Produce quality content.

The biggest investment you could have for your website is to have a steady stream of quality content.

Quality content means going beyond what is readily available on other sites.  It also means:

a. content that people will read so that they stay longer on your webpage.

b. something of real value for your customers and visitors.

c. useful, educational, informative and relevant information.

3. Aim for content engagement.

Content engagement is how you capture your visitor’s attention.  If you have good content engagement, your visitors would stay on your page and read it through.  How do you measure this?  There are a lot of ways, but the easiest would be to:

a. Take a look at the bounce rate.  A poor bounce rate might mean that your visitors are not finding what they are looking for in the content that you have.

b. Take a look at how often your content is being shared on Facebook or tweeted/retweeted on Twitter.

4. Keep your content fresh.

Google prefers new content on just about any topic.  Remember, however, that not all search queries are going to need fresh content.  For example, recipes are more or less treated the same no matter if you added it today or last year.  But when you think your content hinges on timeliness, then make sure you serve it piping hot.

In the long run, it does not matter what tactics and techniques you are using right now.  Nothing will happen to it if you do not have good content to back it all up.  You may get away with looking for shortcuts to ranking high, such as spamming blog comments or paying for links, but as we have seen with Panda and Penguin, you will – sooner or later – be found out and penalized for it.

As marketing budgets are becoming scarcer and tighter, it might make sense to pour your budget into what would only work for the long term: putting up great content.

This post is brought to you by Chris Barnwell of SEOinc.com, a search engine optimization company based in Carlsbad, CA..  Coming up with good content that people want to read as well as link to can be a time consuming task, but it’s well worth it to put that effort.