Search Engine Optimization is a complicated process; algorithms are constantly changing, and there are very few universally accepted rules. Those employed in the industry use nebulous terms and concepts when they are talking with clients to try to add credibility to their work (because if I don’t understand you, I’m left to conclude that you are smarter than me). Meanwhile, clients want to buy into the hype and insist that they get “first page results” because someone told them that if you are on page 2, you are invisible to your customers.
A few years ago we had a client trying to break into online. They manufactured disinfectant and cleaning products which they sold to hospitals. They had a bad website, no way to order online, and they wanted to rank #1 in organic searches for words like “HIV” and “clean.” Setting expectations becomes a big part of client relations in situations like this, and there are some consultants out there who would “guarantee” they can do it. Others would cite the “google sandbox” and say that results won’t be seen for about six months, that anyone who says otherwise is lying and just wants your money, and that you just need to trust and be patient and you’ll start climbing the ranks eventually as they slowly and organically “tweak” your site.
“The Long Tail” has become one of the favorite buzzwords in the industry because it captures the benefits of being specific. To quote Wikipedia, ‘the Long Tail is a potential market and.. the distribution and sales channel opportunities created by the Internet often enable businesses to tap into that market successfully.’ There are all sorts of tools to help you “discover” this potential market by using KEI and various link packages so you can “dominate” the results pages. The process is boxed up and sold as technology, which is again the essence of the problem.
What does it mean to dominate a results page? Wouldn’t it be that if people run a query for your product, they will find you towards the top of the list (maybe even in the coveted #1 spot)? Natural search is not the place for you to be #1 on the term “amazing,” unless you sell amazing as a noun, or you blog about “amazing” things. Businesses wanting to tap into the powers of the internet don’t think about this though (‘yes, but, if someone searches for amazing and sees us in the first position, that is incredible branding!’). They define the audience they want to reach as anyone who types a term loosely related to their company, and then they try to find ways to beat the “competition.”
I want to take a very simple, real life illustration to explain what happens in natural search, and what most people aren’t thinking about in their clamor to get all that web traffic. My example is the very site you are reading. The term is Margaret Merrill Toscano. Now, two things to note here.
1. My blog is not very popular as far as search engines are concerned. Even if I had hundreds of friends who daily checked my site, that would be a drop in the bucket compared to thousands of commercial and personal sites out there attracting a much larger audience.
2. My blog is not about Margaret Merrill Toscano. I mentioned her name last week- once- in a post about a PBS documentary. As far as I know, there are no inbound links to this site using her name. There are certainly no page titles, headings, or even <strong>’ed terms that include her name.
Given these two facts, I was surprised last week to look at my site stats and discover that three people had arrived at this site through a search engine query for Ms. Toscano. As of this posting, Google returns 29,700 results for Margaret Merrill Toscano. Crankybabicult.com is result #8.
If I sold articles by Ms. Toscano, I would be pretty pleased. People looking to find her articles would see my site, and I would work to optimize so that I came up even higher in the rankings by expanding my library and possibly writing more about her. It wouldn’t matter that my site is not ranked among the top 100,000 on the internet or that it has a low page rank. I would be effectively reaching the people who were looking for the products I sold.
What if I didn’t understand SEO though? Here’s what would happen. I would say, “so few people have heard of Margaret Merrill Toscano. We get such little traffic on that term. We need to increase our online exposure. Let’s optimize, instead, for the word ‘person,’ because she is a person, and that is a much broader term that probably gets a lot more searches. It is bad for business if we are satisfied with only appearing when someone is actively seeking our niche market. We need to advertise, and we’ll start with anyone who is looking for a person!”
Now, arguably my site is sometimes about various persons. But optimizing for that term would be such a bad idea. I would need to go back and rewrite all my posts to say “person” when I mean “Jordan” or “Jo” or “David.” That would make my site much less relevant than it already is. And people who are trying to find information on any of these persons would never find my site in their searches. Not to mention I would then need to try to “beat out” every other site that talks about a person.
I talk to people a lot about matters of the search engine, and I do my best to explain the importance of being specific and relevant. Of course searchers sometimes don’t know how to identify what they are looking for, and the very process of search has its flaws. I love it anyway. I love the potential the internet has to connect seekers with what they are seeking. In my opinion, the only role optimization should have in this process is to make it easier to find what is being sought. That doesn’t take six months, link packages, boxes, or bags. It takes clear, specific writing above anything else.
If you are a business, write about what you sell. If no one wants what you sell, that’s a problem that optimization won’t help you with. If people are looking for what you sell but don’t realize it (your product is the solution to their problem), then make sure you are writing about the problem as well. Contrary to the claims of certain direct marketing testimonials, the internet is not a cash machine that awards millions of dollars to whoever is in the top position for any given keyword. Most likely, you make money when consumers buy your products. Your goal in search engines is just to help them find you so they can buy from you. If you understand that and are okay with that, you and anyone who is working with you to accomplish that will do very well.
(Note: upon reading this over, I can hear in my head valid criticism insisting that location is key, that there is a reason companies are named AAAA, and that the difference between position #2 and #5 can be hundreds of thousands of dollars in some markets. To which I say: absolutely. If you are #5 for a highly-competitive keyword and know that sales would be improved by moving up three spots, you should definitely optimize on that keyword. That is a clear, quantifiable, (hopefully) achievable goal. But arbitrarily choosing popular keywords to optimize on for the sake of traffic, even if this worked, would not generate more sales.)
