Yesterday I was heading back from a business meeting in Boston when I had what you might call a mini-epiphany, so I popped my thoughts into a tweet.
My head was swimming with thoughts about SEO (search engine optimization) vs. SEM (search engine marketing) and how easy it is to become obsessed with minutia, like single keywords or individual web pages.
If you have any experience building a website or putting together a blog you know what I mean. You want to appeal to a certain niche market, attract an audience or score a profit. So rank for those top search terms, right?
Wrong…well, sort of.
Got You In My Crosshairs
Doesn’t this all sound wrong? I mean, I believe you need to do things like build smart URL’s that are keyword friendly, create new focused content on a regular basis and understand the most relevant terms people search for in your market.
This is all infrastructure. But there’s more.
If you fall into the trap of lingering on keywords day and night you can lose sight of why people should even care about you. What do they want to see when they find your pages of online content? Are you worried about one specific page or are you making sure every page has compelling info?
So here’s my thoughtful solution as I come off of 12 hours sleep in three days:
- Learn Some Patience — Don’t freak out if you’re not ranking for ‘Extreme Mountain Bikes’ during the second month of a website optimization project unless you know it’s the only keyword that will bring an outdoor biker to you. In other words, understand that you need to rank for lots of terms — the Internet and search engines represent a large ecosystem full of people who search in millions of unique ways.
- Clean Up The Mess — Did you know Google personal search is turned on whether you’re logged in or not? This means the results you see might not be what a potential fan sees, but there’s a solution. Use the Google Ad Preview Tool for an uninfluenced version.
- Don’t Over Engineer the Product — Japanese firms are often baffled by Americans. We build elevators that say ‘Maximum Weight Capacity: 2000 LBS’ when in reality each unit can accommodate 2,500 pounds. The same idea holds true on the web. Build a good page but make sure to breath some life into the content you make (That’s what people will link to).
We’re Gonna Go National
The bottom line is that you can make a huge impact on the people who search the web each day by focusing on their local community experience. I’m the kind of guy who looks at other people when they see something really cool so I can check out their reactions. If you infuse this same type of curiosity into your day you can learn some kick ass things about all those potential visitors.
Long tail. Short tail. Landing pages. Optimization. It’s all important. That’s why you’d do well to get beyond one single detail and see the larger picture. Hell, I do. If I didn’t then my site would be more stale than week old bread.
Let’s get holistic.