Content is the best long term solution for ranking websites, links will fade over time, but content doesn’t. I’ve ranked people where it took maybe 200 articles of content (240+ hours) of time to rank them for a large keyword; and 5 years later without even touching the website, it’s still on the first page of Google.

And I’ve had to learn a lot about Voice Search lately, which is the new thing if you have your eyes on a long term success path.

The 3 biggest things for 2020 are…

• Voice Search
• Mobile Optimization
• Website Speed

You need to start learning how to write SEO for Voice Searches, which is about 20% of the 80% of mobile searches for local and long-tail search phrases, mostly starting with Who, What, When, Where, Why & How.

It works for everyone, depending on the competition of the keywords and range of target location on time.

Local companies in a small metro take less effort, big companies in a large metro take a lot more effort.

How Much Content Does It Take To Rank A Website?

As a general rule of thumb, not an exact science by any means but based on years of experience…

• Low Competition – 60 articles on the subject
• Medium Competition – 120 articles on the subject
• High Competition – 300+ articles on the subject

Articles must be interlinked, with good keyword anchor text. Provide…

• Be of highest quality
• Conversational tone
• Infographics
• Statistics
• Related Pictures
• Related Posts
• Social Media Sharing options
• Author bio
• 3rd Party Site verification link (for health and law)

How Ranking With Content Actually Works

For a bigger company in a large metro area, let’s say there are over 280 competitors in almost 4 million people; and most at the top are using cheap link-building schemes, like link wheels and private servers with competitor websites that are their own on different IP’s in different accounts to hide that fact it’s one company.

It will be hard to beat these existing competitors using content writing; you might need hundreds of educational articles on your industry before Google considers you enough of an Industry Authority to start ranking you above the cheaters.

Can You Rank Someone Without Using Content Marketing?

Can you rank someone just using links and not using content? Yes. Is it the best long term solution? No.

Can you rank someone with JUST content and no links at all, even high-level competition industries? Yes, 100% possible.

Content Writing Isn’t Profitable For Larger SEO Companies

I once trained some staff at a large SEO company as a consultant; I tried to teach them content writing but the owner after a few days said it just wasn’t profitable. And it’s not; the only way now to write expert content is to write it yourself and learn SEO, or hire someone who is willing to become an expert in your field to write it for you. Unless you are ranking yourself in a town of 10,000 – 30,000 people with 1-5 competitors, the chances that you can rank yourself above others easily is almost not possible.

Link wheels will fade and it’s being rumored that less credit is going to link building in the future; social media now plays a part too though, so having a social media presence is a real thing.

There “is” a list of directories and social media accounts a company should be in to start with, but the smaller directories and junk pages built solely for links and citations for Google Maps… there will be a lot of people losing a lot of their ranking when these get disavowed.

Nothing beats writing high quality content that teaches, educates and inspires people.