Do you still optimize your site for the search engines?
Monday, October 30th, 2006;
-- Andy Beal |
By Yuri Filimonov
It is been a while search engine optimization has entered the mainstream and everyone and their mouse has started offering SEO services. But what is it about search engine optimization that should site owners care about?
What is SEO?
By definition, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is optimizing a site (or a page) for the search engines (some may view it as optimizing the search engines themselves, but that’s another story). When optimizing a site, the following factors may be taken into account:
- site crawlability (how easy the site is spidered by the search engine bots)
- using the right keywords after the keyword research
- placing the keywords right
- having links from topical websites
- having links with relevant text in the link (anchor) text
Naturally enough, most of the factors relate to how the search engines evaluate a website and only one of them is related to the humans (the words that the potential site visitors use).
Who do we optimize the site for?
But we have to remember that we create a site for the site visitors, because they will be buying our products and using our services. So how do we make sure the site works well with the humans?
While site spiderability doesn’t directly affect how it is perceived by the people, other aspects may as well be optimized taking the humans into account.
Optimizing for the people
As mentioned before, knowing the words your customers use to find your product is one of the main tasks, when optimizing your website. In turn, using the words your customers will relate to is important for them to understand your offer better, which should result in more orders.
Though you may be tempted to stuff the right keywords everywhere you can, you should also remember that your visitors see the site as well. If they find it hard to read, they will leave it.
That is why having all titles, link labels and body text, written for the humans, is vital for your site success. When arriving at your site with human-friendly text, your customers will read the site copy, will be able to understand you and will order your product. Of course, you need to remember about the search engines and know which keywords to use and where to have them. But you can have human-friendly titles instead of keyword stuffed ones, too.
When it comes to links, there’s a myth of ‘The more links, the better’, while in reality it should be “The more targeted traffic the link brings, the better”. When aiming at receiving targeted traffic, you automatically get links from quality topical websites (where your target audience is) and use relevant anchor text as well.
So, as you may have noticed, by focusing your efforts on optimizing your site and promotion for the humans, you gain not only basic SEO benefits, but the real targeted traffic and conversions as well.
Rounding up
Generally, a solid approach would be to develop your site for the people and only take the search engines in mind, which will guarantee greater conversion rates. If you also consider copywriting, site usability, accessibility and credibility - all of which relate to the humans - you’ll gain the competitive advantage your online rivals may not have.
[The above article is a submission for Marketing Pilgrim’s Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. Each Monday in October, entries will be published and the most popular article of the week will qualify for the $5,000 grand prize. If you’d like to submit an entry, please view the contest entry-requirements and guidelines.]
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October 30th, 2006 at 10:56 pm
[…] As vangogh said, you can be #1 for a non-competitive phrase as long as your page is included in the index. This depends on the number of incoming links you have. That’s as easy. From my experience, I can say that 5-12 hours is enough, mostly. A high traffic site will do it even faster. However, I don’t see a point in clocking the time to get indexed. Quality is what matters Not to mention you need to optimize your site for the humans anyway. __________________ Do you still optimize for the search engines? Website optimization services […]
October 31st, 2006 at 12:08 am
[…] Update: read more about optimizing the site for the humans. […]
October 31st, 2006 at 5:37 am
[…] When it comes to social marketing, there’s just one principle you need to follow: give to get. If you focus on providing value to your customers, you can easily find ways to make sure your customers have the best possible experience. You can also find ways to optimize and promote your website. […]
November 1st, 2006 at 8:58 pm
[…] As I have become a blog owner only recently, I can comment as both, a blog writer and reader. As a reader, I don’t see a reason why someone shouldn’t link to a quality website. In fact, I am for external linking. When a blog post is interesting, provides me with food for thought or with useful information, I can only welcome it. If it also offes me a tool or a product, to help me with it, why not. It just doesn’t have to look like an ad. It has to be natural. As a blog owner, I can say for sure: I’ll only link to something I can recommend to my readers. In fact, I link out pretty extensively and I don’t see a problem. Now to the marketing point of view. To get links from bloggers, you need to create content that is relevant and useful for the bloggers and/or their audience. This can be anything, depending on the industry. Also, to get a link from a blogger (or a mention in a blog post), you can simply email the blogger and suggest him/her a new source of information, or an interesting product. But read his/her blog first, understand the style, the content and see if your site/product fits the blog. If not, try finding another. Even finding 2-3 blogs that suit your product very well is some good luck here, I believe. Did I say you don’t have to pay for such mentions? Of course, though, you can offer a monetary incentive, if you get a refusal, but that’s another story. Also, instead of trying to buy your way to the top of the search engines and to win your customers hearts, you need to create quality content. It is very easily linked to, talked about and converts much better than anything. Also, I’d advise optimizing your site for the humans, as well as using natural promotion methods. As the methods are built around providing value, they can only do good both for your customers, the middle-website and you. __________________ Do you still optimize for the search engines? Website optimization services […]
November 3rd, 2006 at 6:25 am
[…] It sounded like you wanted to put the automated blog on your production hosting, not on your website. You can setup industry news to be published on your site, but I really don’t see the benefits of having a fully automated RSS to posts blog, except for traffic. What value will your visitors get from it? Why not just either comment on the news (unique comments), write articles (unique and useful articles) or create full-blown pieces of content (very useful, linkable stuff). Anyway, if you don’t link from your main site to the automated blog, you won’t be harmed. If you do link to your duplicate content aggregator, you probably wont get hurt - but that’s not clear to me, whether linking to duplicate content hurts or not. __________________ Do you still optimize for the search engines? Website optimization services […]
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February 10th, 2007 at 1:25 am
I will only link to something I can recommend to my readers. In fact, I link out pretty extensively and I don’t see a problem. Now to the marketing point of view.
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