SE-NO!

After six years of blogging about digital marketing I've only ever fleetingly mentioned SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Obviously, it's an essential part of any website build and beyond and cannot be ignored. I think the main reason for not mentioning it is that I've always found it tough to reconcile myself with it morally. It's been this sort of necessary evil which I've had to begrudgingly spend time administering.

The reason for this is that in the old days the internet was a mass of weird publishing. Everybody was working out the rules and the etiquette. There weren't the billions of pages we have now so there were always those that could 'play the system' to appear higher in the search results.

Some of the underhand tactics that were used were things like putting white text in the background of a page. This meant search engines would see them but visitors could not thus pushing the website up the rankings. There was also the practice of 'keyword stuffing'. Keywords are words people were using to search for content – and keyword stuffing means putting them all over the page. This did not make for a good user experience as every other word being a keyword meant they barely made sense!

But then search engines got more intelligent. Google, for example is now looking to serve relevant content. If the content it links the visitor to is bad or irrelevant they'll find another, more reliable, search engine to use. Quite rightly Google has penalised any websites using these dark practices for some time now.

So why I have I finally found an interest in writing a post about SEO? It's because for me SEO has now evolved so much that it's not even about 'SEARCH ENGINE optimisation' anymore, but 'USER optimisation'. By putting the user's needs first SEO is no longer a trick that is deployed at the end of a process. It's now simply about publishing good content people like.

By writing in the same way that an audience searches (www.google.co.uk/trends/explore is a good tool for this) your website is more likely to be found. This also means that once it has been found the content is relevant to the search, and you haven't tricked someone to get them there.

You can add all the metadata and SEO tricks in the book. But not only will you have trouble in your conscience you'll also come second best to those with unique content. Writing unique content will prioritise pages on Google instead of mixing you up with your competitors. Spend your time on what your company can really offer and on showing how you differentiate. By doing this the chances are that other websites are more likely to link to you showing Google how trustworthy you are. 

Accessibility is as important to high rankings and I've recently been presenting a lot on this subject. I could write a separate post on this alone! Again, the approach is not to treat it as a tick box exercise but to make your content so inclusive it appeals to everyone. We are all capable of being distracted, in a rush or otherwise engaged. This means we may read a page in a way like those with dyslexia or who do not speak English as a first language. Bearing this in mind when writing makes it better for everybody and ultimately leads to a better website.

Recently we've been very excited to see our Shaping Your World website hit page one of Google for certain search terms. This is no accident as we've been careful to structure the content based on mental models. By making the journey clear as they navigate through the pages users get an idea of what to expect.

So my message is don't try to trick the system - it's not worth your time. Write to your audience. Write to what they want from you in the language they use, using a structure that is intuitive for them and you’ll get SEO as a freebie without even trying.
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