SEO Expert Barry Schwartz on the Only Optimization That Matters: Better Content
Barry Schwartz is an SEO giant. With over 18 years of experience and a track record that includes growing traffic to over 100 million monthly visitors for Rusty Brick‘s portfolio of websites, Schwartz is widely regarded as one of the world‘s top authorities on search engine optimization.
As the CEO of RustyBrick and News Editor of Search Engine Land, Schwartz has a front row seat to the ever-shifting SEO landscape. He‘s weathered countless Google algorithm updates, seen fads and "magic bullet" tactics come and go, and helped countless websites recover from penalties and rankings drops.
Through it all, one piece of advice has remained his north star: If you want to win at SEO, focus relentlessly on creating the best content on the web for your topic.
"It sounds corny, but it‘s really about how can I write the best content, how can I make the best website," Schwartz said in a recent interview. "People in the SEO space are just too in the weeds… If your site is a second slower or a fraction of a second slower, it‘s really not gonna matter that much – if your content is more relevant and much more on topic for your users."
The Folly of Chasing Ranking Factors
It‘s an all-too-common trap in the world of SEO. Marketers and website owners get so fixated on optimizing for the latest ranking factors that they lose sight of the bigger picture.
They fret endlessly over how to shave milliseconds off their page load times or whether their click-through rates from search are high enough. They spend hours fiddling with their robots.txt file and debating the optimal number of internal links per page.
There‘s just one problem with this approach – none of those factors matter nearly as much as the quality and relevance of the actual content on the page.
"Google doesn‘t want to rank websites that are tricking search engines and tricking users, they don‘t want low quality there," Schwartz explained.
Trying to reverse-engineer Google‘s algorithms and optimize for each tiny ranking factor is a losing battle. The algorithms have gotten so complex and dynamic that what works today may not work tomorrow.
For example, Google‘s RankBrain and other machine learning systems analyze user experience signals like dwell time, click-through rates, and bounce rates to constantly refine and adjust rankings in real time. How your individual users interact with your site affects not just how well that one page ranks, but your entire site‘s overall authority and ability to rank.
No amount of technical wizardry can outweigh the impact of having a site full of top-notch, highly relevant content that keeps users engaged and coming back for more.
Real-World Websites Winning with a Content-First Approach
When Schwartz advises prioritizing content quality above all else, he‘s not just pontificating from an ivory tower. He‘s speaking from nearly two decades of experience in the trenches, helping real businesses grow organic traffic and rankings.
One such example is Nutrition Secrets, a health and wellness website Schwartz has worked with for over a decade. When Schwartz first began advising them, Nutrition Secrets was a small site struggling to get traction in the hyper-competitive nutrition niche.
Rather than get bogged down in endless technical SEO tweaks, Schwartz and the Nutrition Secrets team made producing top-tier content their number one focus. They hired qualified expert writers with degrees and credentials in nutrition science. They conducted interviews with leading researchers to generate original, authoritative articles. They poured resources into creating in-depth, heavily researched and cited guides on popular nutrition topics.
The results speak for themselves. Today, Nutrition Secrets attracts over 350,000 visitors per month, and has held the featured snippet for high-volume keywords like "how to lose belly fat" and "foods that burn fat" for years on end.
By investing in creating the most comprehensive, scientific, and trustworthy content in their space, Nutrition Secrets was able to achieve massive SEO success where thousands of other sites fiddling with tags and keywords failed.
Content Quality By the Numbers
Not convinced content is really king when it comes to SEO? Let‘s take a look at what the data says:
Pages with a word count between 1,140-1,285 words tend to rank higher on Google‘s first page compared to shorter content (Source: Backlinko)
The average word count of a Google first page result is 1,447 words (Source: Backlinko)
Articles with an average word count of 2,250-2,500 words attract the most organic traffic (Source: HubSpot)
Content with at least one image significantly outperformed content without any images in terms of organic traffic in an analysis of over 1 million articles (Source: BuzzSumo)
62.96% of content that ranks in Google‘s top 10 can be categorized as "comprehensive" or "highly comprehensive" based on word count, keyword usage, external links and other factors (Source: seoClarity)
While content length alone doesn‘t guarantee high rankings, it‘s clear that Google tends to favor comprehensive, in-depth content that fully addresses the searcher‘s query.
How to Audit and Level Up Your Content
If you‘re ready to take Schwartz‘s advice and make content quality your top SEO priority, the first step is taking an honest look at your current content and identifying areas for improvement. Here‘s a simple process you can follow:
Make a list of your most important pages – your home page, key product/service pages, cornerstone blog posts, etc.
Put yourself in your target audience‘s shoes and critically read each piece of content. Is it engaging and well-written? Does it fully answer the questions a reader would likely have about this topic? Is it more in-depth and helpful than other articles on this topic?
Look for thin or outdated content that can be consolidated or eliminated entirely. Use Google Analytics to find pages with low traffic and high bounce rates – these are prime candidates for a refresh.
Update existing content to be more comprehensive and current. Could you expand a 500 word article into a 2,000 word ultimate guide? Can you add new data, expert quotes, or multimedia to make it more valuable?
Identify gaps in your content strategy. Are there related keywords and topics you could cover to better establish your authority? Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush can help with this.
Consider historical optimization. Look at blog posts that used to drive significant traffic but have declined over time. Refreshing and relaunching those pieces can pay huge dividends.
Putting Artificial Intelligence to Work
As transformative as AI is proving to be for search and SEO, Schwartz cautions against getting too carried away with the hype. While AI writing tools can be incredibly helpful for research, outlining, and even drafting content, they‘re not a complete replacement for human writers.
"This way, you can say: I got better because of AI, I‘m using this to my advantage, as opposed to it destroying me," Schwartz explained.
The key is to think of AI as an assistant, not an oracle. Use it to generate ideas, pull key facts and statistics, and provide a foundation to build on. But don‘t just copy and paste whatever the AI spits out and call it a day.
The most effective approach is to have knowledgeable, talented human writers lead content creation, and use AI as a powerful support tool. Have your writers review AI-generated drafts and substantially edit, fact-check and polish the content to maintain quality and brand voice.
You should also avoid using AI writing tools exclusively, as search engines are getting better at recognizing machine-generated content. Google Search Advocate John Mueller has hinted that Google may eventually take action against content written wholly by AI for the purpose of manipulating rankings.
The Future of SEO is Still Bright
With the breakneck pace of technological change and shifting user behavior, it‘s easy for SEOs to feel unsettled about what the future holds for the industry. But while tactics and best practices may evolve, the core objective remains the same – connect users with the best information to solve their problems and answer their questions.
By embracing the disruption and committing to creating truly excellent content experiences, SEOs can future-proof their strategies and continue to drive organic traffic and revenue for years to come.
"The only way to be an SEO, or in the SEO community, is to love change," Schwartz says. "AI is going to be the most significant change for the industry now and in the future. But you have to take the attitude of – Alright, AI is here, and it might change search results in a big way, and it might change how I do my job, but you have to be one of the first to adopt it."
So don‘t get distracted by shiny new objects or bogged down in the minute details of meta tags and microseconds of load time. Follow Barry Schwartz‘s lead and make producing outstanding, customer-centric content your guiding light. That‘s the real secret to SEO success.
