Content is dead, long live the meta-content

We’ve just published a new tip sheet featuring ten handy ways to search-engine optimise your press release.  There’s some profoundly sensible advice in here, ranging from not putting pen to paper till you’ve done your keyword research, to ensuring your release can be readily shared through social channels, to keeping front of mind the snippets of your release that will show up on search engine results pages (or Twitter, for that matter).

But hang on, amongst all this good stuff is, below the injunction to “Tell the story straight”, is the claim that “[e]ven in the age of SEO, content is king.”

I’m not so sure.

The reason we’re in “the age of SEO” is that a vast surfeit of information requires tools that help us find what we’re looking for. Search engines are obviously hugely helpful here, as are social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, where content-sharing is a not insignificant activity.

As more and more people come to rely on such paths, content becomes less important than the ways in which these filters describe it. Your content can be a regal as you like, but nobody will have the chance to find out without sufficient enticement.

In this environment, maybe meta-content is king.