Building an effective website and one that can be seen by search engines are often two objectives that are at odds with one another.  On one hand, you want to build a website that is engaging, dynamic, and interesting for users, but on the flip side, you need search engines to bring the users and search engines cannot always read the multimedia content you have posted.

For years, Flash, was the standard technology used to develop dynamic and interactive websites, however the problem with Flash is that search engines could not determine what was inside of the websites and accordingly attributed poor rankings to them.  Fortunately, HTML5 appears to be usurping Flash as the dominant technology in interactive websites and search engines can effectively read it.  Horray!  But not so fast.  The growing trend in web-development is that less is more.  The less text you have and the more video, the better website you will have.  In many respects this is exactly right, however search engines cannot read video either.

The point here is that content is king.  Good, well-written, unique textual content is the mother’s milk of search engine results.  The better the content, the easier it is for a search engine to read it.  Unique content on your site means that no search engine can claim you stole it.  Better yet, you have something to offer your visitors to search through.  And that is why it is important to have well written content on your site.

Good unique content:

1. Attracts search engines like moths to a flame.
2. Makes in bound links more effective.
3. Increases your Google Pagerank.
4. Brings your site into tighter alignment with Section 508 of the ADA.

So what is “good” content?  It is important that you are not just slapping anything on your site.  You want your content to provide a useful message, but also play by SEO best practices.  Here are a few things you might want to consider:

1. Provide references to other sites where you got your information.  References show that you actually took the time to research what you wrote.  For more best practices see: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1699948/seo-best-practices-questions
2. Use bullet points when possible.  They allow search engines to segment results better.
3. Use proper sentence structure and grammar.  Spelling mistakes make for an incredulous site.
4. Write for your audience, not for the search engines.