“One of the most obvious, yet surprisingly overlooked, components of a search strategy is the creation of quality content.“ Link >>

SearchEngineWatch.com checks in with an article that does a good job of looking at the importance of quality content for high search engine rankings.  Most articles seem to assume that people know what “content” is and that higher search rankings are just naturally better.

This article does some definition of “content”, and also questions the business value of ranking highly for search terms but not offering a site that leads visitors to spend money with your business.

However, content isn’t always enough - for Google ranking anyway - and I wish I could explain why.  Here’s the situation - my Jeep CJ6 blog contains the most Jeep CJ6 information and pictures found anywhere on the internet (no great achievement, it’s a somewhat obscure Jeep model).  So I have the most quality CJ6 content on the internet, the site is designed to be well-read by search engines (no fancy Flash, JavaScript or other technologies that search engines don’t like), the information is categorized well, and the site is regularly updated.

So I should rank well for CJ6 searches, right?  Just for fun, I periodically check my Google ranking on the keyword of “CJ6”.  I have been as high as #2.  Today I am on page 9.  How does that happen?

Why do sites that sell cars, but currently have no CJ6 information of any kind rank higher than me? 

And who is buying the “CJ6” sponsored link which redirects to a CJ6 search on eBay?  Who makes money from that?

Why does this little child’s art gallery site rank higher than I do?

It appears that many folks have figured out how to fool Google.  I’m a bit disappointed - I’ve been a diehard Google fan for years, but with these kind of junk results I’m going to start to stray back to other search engines.

Like Microsoft’s new search, where I’m currently #1 for CJ6, or Yahoo! where I’m currently #6.

I know - it may seem reactionary to change search engines based on the performance of one keyword, but in this case I know the current state of the web for that keyword pretty well, and Google is just plain dropping the ball.