Why Is Content Important for SEO (and GEO)?

Content is important for SEO and GEO for 5 main reasons:

1. You won't rank or earn mentions without creating content

2. Content tells search engines and LLMs what your site is about

3. Quality content builds trust with Google

4. Content increases the crawl budget allocated to your site by search engines

5. Content creates visibility across different types of search

Let's break these down:

1. You Won't Rank or Get Mentions Without It

You won't rank or get mentions over competitors who are publishing content and sharing their expertise unless you do the same.

Writing unique, search-optimized content on topics people actually search for is how you build authority in the eyes of search engines and LLMs.

The more you cover relevant searches with this kind of content, the more Google and LLMs like ChatGPT trust your site as an authority on that topic. And the more they trust you, the better Google ranks you and the more LLMs cite you.

I've seen this firsthand with RankUp customers. For example: EasyAudit.ai.

EasyAudit had zero content when I started working together. They weren't even ranking #1 for their own brand search "easyaudit". Pretty much 0 organic traffic. It was all from social and the founder telling people about his business.

After a few months of publishing value-dense, search-optimized articles, EasyAudit started ranking on page one:

EasyAudit also started appearing in AI Overviews:

And getting mentioned by LLMs:

TL;DR:

Content that meets search intent, is unique and search-optimized --> Builds authority --> Earns trust --> Ranks high and gets your business mentioned.

No content = No authority = No trust = No rankings and mentions.

2. Tells Search Engines and LLMs What Your Site is About

Search engines and LLMs crawl your website's content to understand what it is about. The more relevant content you have, the easier it is for them to understand what you do and when to rank or mention your site.

According to Google's SEO Starter Guide, Google analyzes the following aspects of your content to understand what your site is about:

• Headings

• Body text

• Title tags and meta descriptions

• Image alt text

• Anchor text

• Video transcripts and captions

Because Google's algorithm is secret, this list barely scratches the surface.

But it's clear that the less content you have, the less Google has to evaluate. And the less it knows about you, the harder it is to determine where to rank you in search results. The same applies with getting mentions from LLMs like ChatGPT and Perplexity.

3. Builds Trust with Google

Quality content signals expertise and reliability to Google's algorithms. Google rewards your site with higher rankings if your content consistently provides accurate, helpful information, because it trusts you'll satisfy searchers.

Google uses the E-E-A-T framework to evaluate quality:

• Experience: You've actually done the thing you're writing about. Tested the product, used the software, lived the situation.

• Expertise: You have the knowledge to back up what you're saying. For medical or legal topics, that means credentials. For most other topics, it means demonstrable skill and depth.

• Authoritativeness: Other reputable sources recognize you. They link to you, cite you, mention you as a reference.

• Trustworthiness: Your content is accurate, transparent, and safe. If Google can't trust your content, strong signals on the other three won't save you.

Demonstrate all four and Google has strong reasons to rank your content above competitors.

It's not just your rankings that benefit from creating quality content tho. It's also your performance in AI search.

When LLMs pull information from the web, many of them tend to favor the same sources Google does. A Semrush study found Perplexity citations overlap 91% with Google's top 10 rankings. Google's AI Overviews overlap 86%.

The study confirms that the E-E-A-T signals helping you rank on Google also increase your chances of getting cited by AI.

4. Increases Crawl Budget

Sites that publish content frequently signal activity and relevance to search engines, which leads to more crawl budget being allocated to them.

You can check your crawl budget in Google Search Console under Settings → Crawl Stats. Look at "Total crawl requests" to see how often Google visits your site:

Crawl budget is the number of pages Googlebot will crawl on your site within a given timeframe. More crawl budget means your new pages get indexed faster.

In layman's terms, the higher your crawl budget, the more important Google thinks your site is, giving your new pages a better chance to be ranked faster.

5. Creates Visibility Across Different Types of Search

Content creates visibility across different types of search, such as image, video, and AI search. A single well-optimized piece can rank in multiple search formats simultaneously, multiplying your reach without additional content production.

Here are the main search formats your content can appear in:

• Text-based search - The classic Google results page with blue links

• Image search - Google Images and visual search results

• Video search - YouTube results and Google's video carousel

• News search - Google News and the "Top Stories" carousel

• Forums search - Reddit and Quora results surfaced in Google

• AI search - ChatGPT responses, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity answers

For example, a how-to article with embedded images and video can rank in text results, appear in image search, surface in video carousels, and get cited by AI search engines.

This is why content is foundational to SEO.

Without it, you're invisible across all these formats. With it, every piece you publish becomes another entry point to your site.

What Type of Content Works Best for Search Visibility?

Blog posts and articles are the most versatile format for search visibility. They can combine text, images, and video in one piece. They're also easy to adapt into different content types like how-to guides, listicles, and comparisons, each matching different search intents.

This versatility is why blogs remain the most widely used content format for SEO.

According to HubSpot, 90% of marketers who use content marketing include blog posts in their strategy.

That said, the best format always depends on search intent.

Someone searching "mortgage calculator" probably wants an interactive tool, not an article. And a question like "is [product] worth it?" might get more traction on Reddit than a brand's blog.

Match the format to what searchers actually want to see.

So how do you create quality content at scale that ranks and gets AI mentions?

Create High-Quality Content Fast With RankUp

RankUp is a team of AI agents that creates unique, search-optimized content for both Google and LLMs using your product knowledge and industry insights.

The team consists of 3 specialized SEO AI agents:

• Magnus - Creates your content strategy

• Lyra - Manages your content production

• Cedric - Writes the content

Here's how Lyra and Cedric work together to create high-quality content that ranks, gets cited, and converts:

But we're just barely scratching the surface here with the team's capabilities.

If you want to see RankUp's entire agentic content system in action and get your SEO team agentified, book a call today.

FAQs

Why 96.55% of content gets no traffic from Google?

96.55% of content gets no traffic for 3 main reasons:

1. It doesn't match search intent, meaning the content doesn't answer the right question, or doesn't cover the topic thoroughly enough.

2. The content lacks unique value. It says the same thing as thousands of other pages already ranking.

3. Google doesn't trust the website as a credible source on that topic yet.

If you want to learn how to create content that get's traffic from Google (and also from LLMs), check out this guide to SEO Content Creation in the Age of AI Search.