When Eve stood under the apple tree and started talking to a snake, most people think that what she heard from the scaly slitherer was a bunch of slander directed at God. But what that serpent actually leaned over and whispered in her ear was this: Content is king.
It's been the mantra of the internet almost since its inception. It's the standard advice given to anyone and everyone, whether they're just starting a new web business or they're struggling with an existing one. It's not true, I'm not sure it's ever been true, but it definitely hasn't been true since at least 1997 when most of the stuff on the internet was crap anyway.
When someone says "content is king" they usually mean a couple of different things. Let's break this particular lie down by all the different definitions applied to it.
If You Build It, They Will Come
When dished out as advice to someone starting a new website, "content is king" is usually shouted out as a way of encouraging the internet noob, a way of telling them that the don't need to worry about getting visitors, if they do a good job they'll be rewarded for it.
The idea behind this notion is that internet users recognize quality when they see it, and they'll flock to it. In practical application it's supposed to mean that if you write better articles than your competitor, people will come read what you have to say instead of them. Or if you have higher quality images or video or products than that other guy who's competing against you, people will choose your site over theirs. The idea here is that whoever has the best content wins.
That's not true, and here's the all too obvious proof, using the simplest, most obvious example: Podcasts.
In theory podcasts aren't really driven by search engine traffic. They build their audiences almost entirely by word of mouth, and so that should make them the purest expression of the "content is king" principal. The word on the street is that no amount of SEO will make your podcast popular. It's up to the people. If the cream is going to rise to the top anywhere, it must be here. So, let's take a look at the most popular podcasts on iTunes. Here they are, in order from most popular to least:
1. This American Life
2. WNYC's Radiolab
3. Stuff You Should Know
4. NPR: Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me
5. Freakonomics Radio
6. The Adam Carolla Show
7. The Moth Podcast
8. NPR: Fresh Air
9. NPR: Car Talk Podcast
10. Harry Potter Podcast
That's the top ten. Six of those top ten podcasts are backed by old media radio stations and newspapers. Their popularity is a direct result of being promoted by and associated with those non-internet outlets. Two of them are hosted by celebrities in Adam Carolla and the now semi-famous authors of book turned movie "Freakonomics". They get their popularity, at least in part, by being associated with well known names. The Harry Potter Podcast is wholly owned by Warner Bros. and pushed through their content networks. It's basically an advertisement for their brand. The remaining podcast is "Stuff You Should Know" a podcast pushed by the well known content farm "How Stuff Works", a site reviled for its low quality content but high-dollar SEO.
Are some of those podcasts good? Sure. Did they earn their position in the top ten solely because they are good? Nope. if they had, then surely there'd be at least one podcast in the top ten from someone who wasn't already famous, on the air, or backed by blackhat SEO operatives before beginning their podcast career.
Want more proof?
Most Popular Business Podcast: The Dave Ramsey Show, a rebroadcast of a popular, syndicated radio show.
Most Popular Health Podcast: Savage Love, hosted by a famous author and TV personality.
Most Popular Music Podcast: NPR again.
Most Popular News & Politics Podcast: NPR again. #2 is a rebroadcast of parts of Bill Maher's TV show.
Most Popular Sports Podcast: ESPN of course.
Go through every category on iTunes. It's all corporations and celebrities. Nothing else.
All of these shows gained their popularity by being associated with some other, pre-existing brand whether it be Harry Potter, or NPR, or Adam Carolla. Content, even though some of it is good, had at best a minor role to play in their popularity.
Amongst the thousands upon thousands of podcasts currently on the internet, I feel confident in saying that somewhere out there is at least one podcast which is better than all ten of these top spot holders, but you'll never see that podcast listed in the iTunes top ten until that good content marries itself to an existing brand, or finds someone with the money necessary to advertise or promote it.
What this illustrates is that on the internet, just like everywhere else, content isn't king. Branding, money, and distribution are everything. You have to have something to advertise or direct people to, so content fits into the picture, but it's not everything. Content by itself, no matter how good, is utterly meaningless.
Google Cares About Content
But what about Google? Doesn't its search algorithm take into account the quality of the content on a website when determining how to rank them? Not really. Actually recent statements from Google have made it clear that they're beginning to focus more on promoting "trusted brands". Their algorithms look for things like inbound links and keyword density (which actually gets in the way of good writing most of the time). Google can't tell if something's well written or not and it doesn't care. It has no idea if the guy who wrote whatever it is that it just put in the #1 spot for "gardening advice" has any idea what he's talking about. It doesn't know if that image of Lindsay Lohan is a blurred out piece of crap or not. All it knows is that the page that stuff was on had a lot of keywords on it, and the person who owned that page had done the fancy SEO necessary to make Google believe his cat videos were worth its time.
Google not only doesn't care about content it doesn't really know what it is. Crafted properly, a bunch of useless gobbledeegook can rank higher than the most perfectly written article, easily, as long as it hits on all the right signals. SEO marketers make use of this and always will.
Some will tell you that the answer to this problem is social, let people vote for the best content and that way the cream rises to the top. This theory assumes that people know what good content is, or for that matter even care. Mostly they don't. The average internet user will "like" just about anything, if it's the first thing they see, without bothering to look for anything better.
It's this very reason why the competition to get on the first page of Google search results is so fierce. Savvy webmasters know that if you're not on the first page, you might as well not be listed, because internet users won't look any deeper than page one, no matter how good or bad those page one results are.
Content isn't king. It's more like something you have to have before you can get down to the business of what it really takes to make your website popular. But keep right on believing content matters. As long as you do, the guys on top will stay on top, and you'll stay comfortably hidden away on the bottom... where they want you.
