“Hey, great article…..and by the way, has this been optimized for search?” This is an after-thought for a few content managers and, a forethought for the majority, who believe in rightly directing the power of SEO to stay on top of search engine rankings. The key here is “rightly directing the power of search” as SMART search engines like Google are quick to separate the wheat from chaff. Not to forget the fact that Google continues to dominate search as the world’s most advanced search engine with no signs of slowing down any time soon.
To begin with, in my capacity as a content manager, I was never a great fan of SEO. I was of the view that nothing can take the place of great content. If you are great at connecting ideas and a gifted wordsmith, what more you need? After all, “One Hundred Years of Solitude“, “War and Peace“, or any other recent great piece of work, print or digital, is not always produced keeping “what’s trending” in mind. Now when I look back, and try to analyse my thought process then and today, I realise that SEO was in its infancy then. And I too, was a newly minted content manager. Being a reasonably good writer, I was also offered a position as a journalist at The Times of India, Bangalore office. Additionally, Google’s Florida update on keyword stuffing by spammers masquerading as SEO Gurus added fuel to my increasing skepticism on SEO malpractices. I mention all this just to indicate that my mind set at the time was focused solely on the positives of remarkable writing and the negatives of search engine optimization
What I understand now, 10 years down the line, is that this was akin to stating: “I am well now (my team is producing great content), I will not undertake efforts to sustain my wellness. I will stick to what has been known all along, and try not to initiate a conversation with the new kid (SEO) on the block.”
What was true then is true today as well: Nothing can, and will, replace great content. And, if used wisely, SEO can be a great enabler for you and your team’s content efforts. Whether you are a small business looking to expand, or a rapidly expanding company in any given domain, be it, health care, retail, or technology, SEO can certainly supplement your revenue efforts. For instance, it is always advantageous to know the words your target audience invariably uses when looking for a product, service, or information. Google Trends for instance, lets you compare searches over time for two or more words you have found to be commonly used by your target audience. Also, it would be wise to create a list potential keywords relevant to your business and also make it a regular practice to spotlight the best keywords with a reasonable amount of traffic each month in Google. In the small analytics division that I worked for, this practice brought about an increase of 10,000 visitors each week from search engines alone; and also the overall traffic doubled from 20000 visitors each week to nearly 40000. Equally important is your capability to bring out ontologies: the more the relevant ontologies you are able to bring out in your content piece, the more likely you are to rank higher in search. Relevant ontologies gives a better contextual understanding to search engines and are also an indicator of the comprehensiveness of the article that you’ve produced. Some of the other things that worked in our favor included:
1. Ensuring our URLS were search engine friendly
2. Having a list of semantic keywords ready as it definitely helped us to stay on course with our evolving product story.
3. We stuck to our content posting schedule at all costs, and always had the drive to create unique, fresh content for our target audience
4. A few of the areas where user interaction wasn’t up to the mark were improved by ensuring as best a mobile-friendly navigation as possible, and improving the overall operability of the site, keeping 404 errors to the minimum to say the least.
Hope these SEO nuggets that guided us, guide you equally well, dear reader!
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