Creativity is Back! Search Gets More Content-Relevant – and Ethical

The “SEO” buzzword still dominates content discussions, and it’s still important. But as marketer Adrienne Waldo points out in Finally: Search Is Starting to Reward Creativity Over Shady Tactics on AdAge (http://bit.ly/pGUu38), marketers, writers, and creatives of all other varieties used to bemoan the issue of trying to write and create content authentically while packing in keywords. We couldn’t compete with those hacks out there using black hat techniques and generally manipulating the system.

The game has changed. Google’s 2011 Panda update is the beginning of something beautiful: A world of real and relevant content. Well, maybe that’s reaching. But this new frontier at least provides a blank screen to start from for those of us actually focused on engaging content. And that’s all we ever wanted.

So get back to quality over quantity in the links and trackbacks. Add some white papers and video to your site because they’re educational and fun for your readers. And get back to being creative. Because even though creativity always mattered, now it’s relevant.