Quality Content vs. Popularity

Saying that popularity overrules quality is pretty debatable, especially when it comes to search engine marketing. It is not surprising that sites and content (no matter how clumsy or insignificant) that have been marketed well and are linked to and by more popular sites pull rank over higher quality content. And since the weight of a site or a page is often determined by the number of links and visits, they overpower more insightful content that lack search engine optimisation by a mile.

Quality content can easily be overlooked because of sites that know how to market well. As with everything else, web ranking is based on popularity and the larger your audience is the greater the possibility of a higher rank on SERPs. The ones with better ways to promote, distribute, and market content to the target audience are also the ones that have better chances of getting linked to and in turn rank higher than those with higher quality content.

What search engine optimisation (SEO) does is mainly help these higher quality content to break such popularity barriers, therefore making them the most noticed among the hooplas of other more popular sites. SEO is a great tactic to pull ahead and make your content popular, therefore leveling the battle field with those with powerful marketing and distribution strategies.

By analogy, search engine marketing is just like politics. The person with more logical, rational, and more intelligent views (in other words the one with more weight) becomes the exception and the more popular, more seen; more attention grabbing becomes the rule. Who gets voted? The most popular of course.

As with most aspects of life, it is not always about the quality and the weight that you put to the table but your capacity to sell and market your content more successfully. If you want your higher quality content to be noticed, then go around the popularity game and look for tactics to break through better marketing schemes.