Is the term Search Engine Optimization (SEO) confusing? Are you not really sure what it means? SEO can be very complex and hard to understand or explain. I was enlightened this past week when Zain, our Director of SEO, simply explained that website SEO is just like a book. A light bulb went on in my head and I thought; “Now that is an easy way to explain the concept of SEO”.
A book and SEO have much more in common than you think and it makes very logical sense. SEO can sometimes be hard to explain and complex to understand. Below is a list of analogies (between a book and SEO) that makes SEO easy to understand and remember, even for non-technical people.
- There is only one recognized publication in the library; a website domain registered in the Domain Name System or a book registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.
- The navigation bar on a website and a table of contents in a book have a similar function. They both help navigate a reader.
- Unique headline titles for each webpage are like chapters in a book. Both are always unique and describe what the webpage or book chapter is about.
- Each webpage or book chapter should have enough relevant content to tell the story, for SEO, we like 500 words or more. Think of a chapter in a book. It’s normally a few pages. A webpage is no different. Try to aim for as much content on a page as possible rather than the bear minimum.
- The website Site Map is comparable to a book’s Index. Both explain the contents of a book or a webpage, if a reader is looking for a specific topic or page.
- Using someone else’s content is OK, as long as you cite the source.
- Duplicate content is a big fat NO, NO! Every published book is unique. A website should be no different.
All of this uniqueness and non-duplication of content helps the search engine robots and crawlers find what your website is about and what differentiates you from the rest of the websites on the internet. The more times the search engines find your content across the internet , the more “eyeballs” you have looking at you and the more relevant you become to hit the “best seller” list…the first page of Google or other popular search engines. Then as we all know, in order to stay at the top of the “best seller” list, you must keep consistently promoting and marketing to gain more “eyeballs” and recognition. You want the message about your product and/or service to go viral through the social public community. You want a “Best Seller”!!!
If you need help or have questions on how to make your website a “Best Seller”, please feel free to contact us at DirectiveGroup.
