Customers Search for Answers, Not Your Community

After writing my last post, Which Comes First, SEO or an Active Community?, I found myself in the car for a few hours delivering a snapping turtle to my daughter in college (if you really want to know, ask me why). So I had plenty of time to think, and what kept coming to mind was the title of the next blog post I wanted to write: Customers Search for Answers, Not Your Communities.

So, I'm going to follow up on the SEO and communities topic a bit further.

Maybe the world is changing and the way people search will change -- I can't predict that. But I believe the way people search now is to find information, and they aren't idly searching: they have questions that they want answered.

Really, how many people do you think go to Google with the thought, "I want to find a community to join today!" or "I hope there's a community centered around this topic!" I don't think so. OK, the social media consultants and bloggers might do this, and really lonely people with too much time on their hands...

But most people use search engines to find answers, not to look for communities. So if you're trying to grow and develop your customer community, you need content that answers the key questions prospective members of your community are likely to have -- and you need to get that content to rank highly in search engine results so that people will find it.

There's an interesting, rather polemical debate about content vs. community on the Search Engine Guide website (see, Content is Dead. Community is King Now). But I think it's rather a case of splitting hairs and failing to define content reasonably. Content is not just what the community manager or website owner creates -- it's that plus what members of the community create. In my view, it's the quality of the content that counts more than who created it. Again, people are searching for answers, and good answers are valuable in and of themselves.

I'm more in tune with Jennifer Laycock's post, Can't Get the (Great) Content Without the Community. Take a look for a nice explanation about the the symbiotic relationship between content and community. In fact, I'll refer you to her post instead of explaining that in detail, for that's one of the key points I wanted to make.

You shouldn't choose between content and community. That's a false dichotomy. Rather, recognize that to build your community you need people to find it, and for you to be found you need valuable content that both answers key questions for people and has been optimized so search engines will display it prominently. High-quality, high ranking content is essential to growing a successful online community.