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From wallflower to leading role: The evolution of content in SEO

Reading Time 2 mins | October 21, 2020 | Written by: Sabine Schymik

SEO and text automation have a longer shared history than many other content marketing areas. The SEO experts Björn Darko and Malte Landwehr called to mind the times when very simple spinning systems generated horrible spam content that were basically only produced to feed the search engines with keywords. “SEOs used to think that the only reason you need content is to get ranked by Google!”

Automation meets content - AXCD
Björn Darko & Malte Landwehr at their AXCD talk about the evolution of content
Malte Landwehr (l.) & Björn Darko (r.) during their AXCD talk.

Both speakers have been involved in SEO and content marketing for many years. Björn works as Director Digital Strategies Group EMEA at Searchmetrics and Malte is Head of SEO at Idealo.  

In a very enjoyable and informative dialog, they told the story of search engine optimization and its most important stages for the content. They showed how the Panda update was a turning point in the importance of content and how even the publication and design of articles on egg cooking are today driven by strategic considerations: 

“Content has moved from being a placeholder in SEO to a highly complex and efficient marketing tactic that requires more than just people thinking about how to make as much money as possible on the internet.” 

Sketchnote of Björn Darko's & Malte Landwehr's AXCD talk
Sketchnote of Björn Darko's & Malte Landwehr's AXCD talk
Sabine Schymik