Beyond Great Content: Shred the Floccinaucinihilipilification

Yes, content is important to SEO. Wait, let me say that again. Great content is absolutely critical to SEO. But the game has changed, and the goal posts have shifted. Google is demanding more. Great content is not enough anymore. We’ve gone beyond great content. Why?

Well, Google is on a mission. First, they want to clean up the mess they’ve encouraged; an Internet flooded with superfluous floccinaucinihilipilifications.

Besides the novelty of finally finding a way to use the longest word in the English language, floccinaucinihilipilification is an apt term. The 29-lettered word is a noun that refers to something that’s worthless. And there is a frightening glut of worthless, valueless content on the Internet today. And search engines are partly responsible for it. Why?

Beyond Great Content: How did it get so bad?

To attract the attention of Google and co., webmasters were encouraged to create content. Unique content. A lot of content. So, out-do your competitors. Get your website spewing content … and those ravenous search engines will come to feed. Create it, and they will come.

To curb the flood of poor drivel belched up by a billion rank-obsessed bloggers, Google stressed the importance of quality content. Among a myriad of key metrics, quality content requires a minimum of 300 words, but longer the better. Because length must equal validity, right?

So, the quality of the content improved but the copious volume of information generated continued to run unabated. Breathlessly so. Nauseating even.

Webmasters were more determined than ever to feed the insatiable appetite of those ever-present search engines because the stakes are just so high. In this game, failure is fatal. First page and you’re something. Top three and you’re hogging all the search. Second page, and you’re nothing, baby. Nothing!

Beyond Great Content: Go Big or Go Home

In their best move yet¹, Google has shifted the target again. We should have seen it coming when we read these words:

The best way to get other sites to create high-quality, relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can naturally gain popularity in the Internet community. Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and the more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it. ~ Love, Mr. Google

Did you read between the lines? It’s no longer just about great content. It’s gone beyond content.

Now, we need to create great content that others endorse.

That others endorse. (Yeah, apparently repeating a phrase makes it stand out.)

Content that secures the treasured “vote of confidence” from other webmasters.

Content that accumulates heaps of organic backlinks.

Of course, this has always been the case, but now even great content without endorsement looks increasingly like that ugly, hideous step-sister that goes by the name of Spam.

So, our focus needs to change. Once upon time in SEO land, we devoted 90% of our time to creating great content. Once polished and published, we felt like Michelangelo having just painted another Sistine Chapel. The remaining 10% of our efforts required quickly flicking our masterpiece to a waiting world via social media. We sat back, lit a ciggie and crooned, “That’s the best I’ve ever had.”

Oh, how the times have changed.

As is often intoned in retail estate circles, “There are three things that matter in property: location, location, location.” In content creation circles, the magic three words are: promotion, promotion, promotion.

Webmasters need to get smart and make the shift if they hope to hit Google’s moving target. And it is no exaggeration to say that we need a priority overhaul. From now on, spend 80% of your time promoting your content, and 20% creating it.

In fact, you’re probably better off investing your time in promoting what you have already written rather than cranking out more of it.

Read that last sentence again. It’s a game changer.

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^{Note 1}

It’s Google’s best move if you agree that the Internet needs to be striped of reams of electronic floccinaucinihilipilification.

You have to admit that I’m getting some mileage out of this word. You’d think I’m trying to rank for it. And don’t think the irony is lost on me. (As an aside, I had to laugh when my WordPress editor suggested I correct the term with the word “oversimplification”.)

In the quest to avoid this article adding to the worthless pile that it’s just condemned, allow me to shed some light on this most interesting noun. You know, because long posts rank better.

Floccinaucinihilipilification is the longest non-technical word in the English language beating “antidisestablishmentarianism” by one letter in a grandstand photo finish. This supreme tongue twister of a word is a mash-up of the following Latin terms: flocci (meaning, a wisp), nauci (meaning, a trifle), nihili (meaning, nothing), and pilus (meaning, a hair). All referring to a sense of triviality, paltriness, inconsequence. Kudos, Wikipedia.

Don’t you feel enriched? Enlarged? Empowered?

That’s the heart of promotion by the way. Adding value to others.

PS. Thanks for putting up with the crazy mood I’m in. I’ll get it out of my system soon.