This week, I attended a networking event at Stamford, not far from Peterborough. It is a group I periodically pop along to and meet some great new people, some with their own business and some part of larger organisations or support networks.
You get about a minute to introduce yourself and your business and then have time just to get alongside people, make some new connections, potentially some new clients. It was during one of the two chatting sessions that I spoke with a lady about SEO services. Her observation of me was that I seemed to think more technically or analytically about search engines and how they work. Which made me think tonight – is SEO too technical, or have people allowed it to appear so?
There are technical elements
Considering search engines use an algorithm (basically a stupidly complicated set of calculation with over 200 different ranking influences) to decide how great your content is compared to others, I’m afraid there is a fair amount of maths and analysis to do. From information architecture (how your site’s content is structured) to competitor analysis, there are numbers to deal with.
Something as apparently simple as ‘link building’ can appear more technical as it’s not just about getting a load of links, but harnessing good quality, authoritative websites to get them to link to you – understanding authority is partially down to statistics.
And of course in order to find out what phrases you want to rank for you need to do keyword research, may with Google Adwords, for a while, or the Google Keyword Tool, where you look at search volume and competition – all displayed in numbers.
So SEO can be very technical, with understanding statistics and maths underlying it. But that’s only part of the picture.
SEO Can Be Very Natural
The true aim of SEO should be to make better content rank higher in the search engines for terms that are relevant to that content. But it’s not just about rankings. You want traffic to your website, and people (traffic is impersonal, remember you’re dealing with real people, really typing stuff into search engines) who you would love to fill out a contact form, make a telephone call or buy something from you.
In the age of the Internet, I believe we risk losing the ability to develop good customer relationships that go beyond the monetary transactions. So here’s a few tips.
- Provide Good, Sharable Content – people will begin to respect you if you show you know what you’re on about. Make that content easily sharable
- Don’t write content purely for SEO or for links – this just disrespect people’s intelligence and does not provide actual useful content.
- Get involved in community – don’t just go after people to make them link to you or to add you as a Facebook friend or follow you on Twitter. Get involved with people, share opinions and content. Link to someone without asking them to do likewise.
- Remember Social Media is ‘Social’ – today’s Whiteboard Friday at seoMoz shows you can build links with twitter – and if you listen carefully, it works because you develop relationship first and not just to get a link – but to be genuinely helpful now and in the future.
Holistic SEO
These are only a few points, but to do SEO effectively, you need to use the data, most definitely. But it’s bigger than that – you need to see the bigger picture and also question your own aims for your website, but get out there and be human, not some sort of ranking machine!
