I’m a big fan of Top Gear. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the British TV show Top Gear, it’s a multi-award winning motoring program that has over 350 million viewers worldwide.
The interesting thing about this is that I know nothing about cars, yet this is one of my favourite shows and I’d hazard a guess that many of those 350 million viewers also aren’t car enthusiasts.
The thing that sets Top Gear apart from the other motoring shows is that instead of going on and on about the mechanical aspects of the vehicles tested, the presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May, and let’s not forget ‘The Stig’ demonstrate the cars’ performance through interesting challenges, races and tests, all the while making fun of each other and putting on a great show that’s better than most sitcoms. They demystify the ever-technical motoring world, making it accessible for people like me who couldn’t tell the difference between a gear stick and a radiator.
So you’re probably wondering how a car show can relate back to SEO.
Many SEO consultants will throw around acronyms, discuss the ethics and colour of hat they’re wearing this week, mention traffic statistics, drop names like ‘Danny Sullivan’ and ‘Matt Cutts’ and spruke the benefits of long-tail… all of which might sound impressive and makes perfect sense to the broader SEO community, but to a client who simply wants more traffic to their website it doesn’t mean a thing.
Then a snake oil salesman comes along and guarantees top rankings, a concept the client does understand, only to discover that what was promised isn’t being delivered and now, in the client’s point-of-view, the SEO industry is full of consultants that try and baffle them with industry-specific technical jargon and then make false promises about results.
It can be a volatile industry.
But what if we, as SEO consultants, took a leaf out of Top Gear’s book and showed clients what we do and how we do it in interesting, entertaining or funny ways that doesn’t require them to take a class on latent semantic indexing.
One of the things that stands out about the SEOmoz community is that a lot of us have a sense of humour, so why not use it for social credibility? Ranking for non-competitive terms like ‘Worlds Greatest SEO‘ or ‘Sexiest Man in SEO‘ is relatively easy and fun, but at the same time demonstrates what can be achieved.
Funny comments on this blog will usually attract a few votes and even though they may not specifically relate to SEO, it still adds value to the community. Being a regular contributor to a well-trusted site like SEOmoz can go a long way in growing your SEO reputation within the industry as a whole.
Don’t get me wrong – SEO isn’t all about fun and games, and having a good understanding of the technical aspects is crucial to succeed… but if a car show can attract thousands of non-motoring enthusiasts simply by being engaging, entertaining and/or humorous, there’s no reason why the SEO industry can’t do the same.
