There has been always discussions about what was more important, if good quality content or SEO. Some said good quality content was more important because without it even if you rank high on search engines people will get tired of you. Some said SEO because they said even if you write interesting content is worth nothing in nobody can read it. Which one is it?

I came across this question in one of my courses. And I really think is none. And both. I think the key factor, the key question should be: What’s your goal, why or for who are you writing?

You’ll probably have a good idea in your mind about the kind of users you would like to see your blog, your product, your story. And if you’re creating content is probably because you believe that what you’re writing it will be useful for them, which at the same time will be useful for yourself as well.

So with that in mind…you start writing. And at the end you find yourself with a very well written content and you truly think it will be useful for your target audience. But you know deep inside, that your piece of content can’t be useful… if nobody finds it.

Here’s where comes my main thought. Good quality content is not “good quality” if it can’t be found, because it won’t be useful for anyone. In other words, good quality content is not good without SEO. Let me rephrase it once again: Good quality content *IS* SEO.

And it’s SEO by its very own nature. When you are writing about it, you probably have in mind what people would be looking for in order to end up looking at your content. If you are writing about  tropical fruits available in March, then you’re writing you’ll surely put somewhere those words. If you found a good article about tropical fruits, you might link it in your content. You’ll try to build the text in the best way so your users can read it easily. in summary, you’re doing SEO almost without thinking about it. But because what you are writing matches exactly what your users want, then you’re doing both good quality content and SEO, at the same time, because they are the same.

If you want to talk about tropical fruits in March, and for instance you don’t make any reference about tropical, fruits, or March… you’ll probably end up with a poor quality content and therefore nobody will find it (I challenge anyone to write something like that! Would be really funny if someone proves me wrong, seriously!)

Now, the last thing should be taken into consideration is if this has been always been like this. Probably not because some years ago you could write bad quality content and still rank high if you used SEO techniques that worked at that time. But since one year ago approximately, Google found a good way to prevent this to happen, and now real good content is the one positioning higher. Let’s say google “bots” have become bit smarter even though I’m sure there’s still little tricks to cheat a bit. But at the end of the day, content is the number one priority in your SEO strategy. Focus on building a good post, and you’ll already have the hardest part of SEO’ing.