Nothing is completely new, it just evolves. So it is with content on the web: the traditional free print model of allowing access to content as a way of getting readers to do something profitable has been transmogrified under the influence of SEO and Google’s all-powerful PageRank algorithms.
It now doesn’t matter how good your product is, or how satisfied your customers are – if you have any competition, you need Google on your side to pull in the punters. What the web gives with the promise of reach, it takes away with the threat of obscurity. The need for Google visibility is, to say the least, pressing.
What’s particularly interesting is that as a side-effect of this need, the generation (some would say abuse) of “related content” becomes as important to businesses as traditional goods and services. So it’s not enough to sell spanners – you need to have articles about using spanners that get linked to and talked about. How to open a tin can with a spanner, the history of the spanner, using spanners in dressmaking, how spanners won the war, and so on. Such content fertilises profitability on the web because when people link to it, and Google sees the links and indexes the content, you’re visible – hopefully beyond your competition.
So far, so Seth.