Howdy Mozzers! I am a long time (ish) reader, but this is my first ever attempt at a post on here, my previous SEO blogging has all be targeted toward potential clients with little to no SEO knowledge at all, so stepping up to you guys is like going from Southport FC to Manchester United, or (insert similar analogy regarding Hockey/Basketball/Toe Wrestling – yes it does exist!).
Anyway, for those of you who didn’t give up on humanity upon discovered the toe wrestling video…I am 19 years old and only been involved in SEO for 11 months, which makes me a baby compared to many of you, however, I have discovered, that many people my age, simply don’t understand (or care) what SEO is or does. If anyone ever takes the time to make the small talk of ‘so what did you do at work today’, the conversation usually ends when they interrupt with ‘Google PANDA?, awww, I love Panda’s’ or something to that extent.
So, I thought, in my finite wisdom, that it is my duty to inform the youngsters of today on the basics of SEO, so that when the Rand Fishkins of the world have hung up their keyboards and swapped the yellow pumas for slippers, the world of search can continue to function! However, how do you get the Youtube, MP3 and Xbox Live generation to care about keyword research and link building? Well here’s my attempt to make it relevant!
What Is SEO?
SEO, or, Search Engine Optimisation, is very much like an ‘itunes chart’ of the internet, websites rank higher on the search engines dependent on how ‘good they are’ and SEO is the practice of making them get up there, much in the same way a musician will write a song and put certain hooks or lines in it, to make it catchy, and therefore, more successful, apart from, with SEO, Google is a 13 year old girl screaming ‘I LOVE THE JONAS BROTHERS’.
How Do You Do It?
SEO tactics can vary hugely, from the basic, to the straight up complicated, but let’s stick to the basics for now – Matt Cutts isn’t due to run off to the woods and become a hermit until 2017, so we don’t have to rush.
- Keyword Research – Keyword research is one of the primary factors of any SEO campaign, you need to find out exactly what people will search for when looking for your product or service, so that you can optimise the website for those terms and bring the traffic in – to simplify, Rihanna likes to sing about whips and chains and other such bondage activity, apparently, what young kids are into these days, there’s no point in her singing a song about political austerity measures.
‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but civil service cuts incite me’ – is like optimising a Web Design site for ‘people who make internetz’.
- Good Content – Having good, relevant, quality content on your website is now more important than ever in SEO success and climbing the SERPs, so make sure you have your writing caps on when blogging or posting news, much like a song having a catchy chorus or memorable guitar riff, just like when you hear the opening riff to Back In Black by ACDC, when Google indexes a well written piece of witty content, it rises to its feet and begins to headbang wildly.
- Link Building – Link building can often be one of the tougher, yet more rewarding aspects of SEO if done correctly, rather than submitting your website to 15 different PR2 internet directories, spend your time negotiating your way into the good books of a webmaster who runs a high authority PR7 domain, and the rewards will be much more…rewarding! Young aspiring musicians can take reference of this when, for example, trying to get people to watch your newest ‘gangsta rap’ video on Youtube, rather than spamming every forum under the sun with ‘watch my video y’all’, just tell the right, interested people, and the word will spread.
Whats All This About Hats?
As with everything in life, in SEO, there are the good guys(or girls) and the bad ones, for every Superman and Captain America, there’s a Joker and Green Goblin to try and undo all the good work. In the SEO industry this is known as ‘white hat’ – the good, and ‘black hat’ – the evil. Note: A physical hat is not actually required for SEO, unless of course, you want to?.
White Hat and Black Hat is something which divides opinion in many people, as there is no set way to ‘do’ SEO, some people argue some tactics are black hat, whilst others argue that white hat is just as bad. For example, an age old SEO joke about white hat tactics is:
“So this SEO expert walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, Irish pub, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor…” haha, aren’t we hilarious….
That ‘joke’ is a shot at the common misconception that white hat SEO is all about putting in any many keywords as humanly possible, however, in modern times, this is a more ‘grey’ (in the middle) or even a black hat technique known as keyword stuffing.
Black Hat techniques such as keyword stuffing and spamming are filling a web page with keywords, more often than not, which are complete gibberish and are wholly written to attract search engines, rather than provide quality to the user, which is what you should be doing. If you’re looking for a black hat way to optimise a website for a particular day of the week, you may want to take tips from this young woman.
Black hat measures may bring extremely temporary success, but when you are found out – and it will happen -there will be strong punishment from the search engines so stay away! Unlike in the schoolyard, in SEO, the good guys get all the Ladies!
Finally, if you still aren’t convinced to take the path of good over evil, black Hat SEO and keyword stuffing can often be compared to:
This! – This fellows continuous keyword stuffing ‘baby, baby, baby, oh, like, baby, baby, baby no’ may have gotten him on to page two for a search term with almost two billion results, but when you see him working in a local ‘Walmart’, you will know that white hat prevailed!
So, kids, go forth, preach the word of white hat, sensible SEO! The call is from destiny, will you accept it…
