A big reason quality online content is important has to do with search engines. When these various search engines’ robots read your content, they’re going to go through and work their magic and, hopefully, reward you for it. While there are various algorithms they use to rank your website, producing regular content is one way to improve your SEO results.

However, there are other factors to consider when writing content – like the fact that a human being may actually read it. And it goes beyond just appealing to the reader, there are some significant SEO benefits to engaging readers and keeping them on your site.

Take this example from SEOmoz. The had one writer produce two different articles; each article was on the same topic and included about the same number of words, but one article earned 378 links and averaged a viewing time of 5:41 while the other earned six links and people stayed on the page, on average, for less than 90 seconds.

They went on to explain the differences between the articles – how they used pictures, headlines, bullet points, etc. There would have been a little difference in how these respective articles were read by the search engines, but a huge difference in how they were read by people.

So what does all of this mean? Yes, it does take more time to make an article look nice and attract (and keep) a reader’s attention. But wouldn’t you rather have the 378 links than you would the six links? Wouldn’t you rather have people reading through your whole article and then sharing it with others?

You may have been able to write an additional two or three so-so articles with the extra time you put into creating a top quality article, but you certainly wouldn’t be getting three to four times the benefit. And while article marketing still has its benefits, Google’s Panda Update still leaves the future a bit uncertain for that method.

So take the time to create quality articles that don’t just make the robots happy, but the people too.