Brands that invested in high quality content that serves the needs of users and customers performed the best in search engine rankings on Google last year, according to the latest annual ‘Winners and Losers Report’ published by Searchmetrics.
The report takes an in depth look at organic search visibility on the most popular search platform by measuring the performance of webpages in organic SERPs. While it is not directly related to ranking, it does give a great indication of how often a website appears on the first page of searches.
Searchmetrics lists a whole host of individual websites that have gained significant SEO visibility during the last twelve months, with YouTube leading the way. But, in content marketing terms, the biggest takeaway is that excellent videos, articles, blogs and other forms of content that serves user intent is the best way to rise to the top of search rankings.
Searchmetrics used about.com as a case study of sorts to highlight how optimised content can make a difference. The internet pioneer was once highly visible, but the domain has slumped in recent years. This is because it has a whole host of texts covering similar topics with a similar format, each with a low word count and optimised for irrelevant keywords.
The study also found the websites that have lost out in 2017 have actually seen bigger drops when Google’s mobile index is factored into the equation. This shows how important quality content optimised for mobile will be for brands aiming to be the biggest winners in 2018.
