Quiddity! - the SEO Blog

After some good old-fashioned paranoia on Wednesday with my post Google Plummets New Depths... (and yes, I realised too late the grammatical minefield that dwells within that title), today I plan to return to basics with a good old-fashioned SEO post. What? SEO? On an SEO Blog?? Won't somebody please think of the children...

And it's SEO content and copywriting I'm focusing on. Specifically my own, or our own with regards to the Essence SEO website. And how we should indeed practice what we preach. *Pause for deep breath*

The recent drought on the blogging front that I regaled you all with last Friday has given me time to reassess the Essence SEO site, its performance, and what it is we’re trying to do here, and to take a look at the content SEO-wise or other. So those of you who’ve been here before and pride yourselves on a keenness of eye may or may not have noticed that the text on the homepage has changed – completely.

Now as anybody familiar with this blog will already know, I am a keen fan of words, content, and passing comment (or should I say forcing my opinion on others?) In fact, I can oft be heard rambling on even when the lights have been turned out and everybody's gone home.

But bumbling aside, I took the chance to have a good gander at this here site and identify a specific problem with the homepage that had until now gone unchecked. The problem was usability/ reader friendliness.

Ahem... Let me break with the habit of a lifetime and ply you all with a wee dram of background info:

As many of you will already know, there’s a much wheeled out adage around the parts of the internet that harbour SEOs in darkened corners of ill-lit saloons, and that is “Content is king”. If you were to listen carefully on a clear, moonlit and uncharacteristically quiet night, you may even hear it being uttered in hushed tones yourselves; as SEOs, social media marketers, bloggers and the rest, meet at the crossroads by the old hanging tree and prepare to sell their souls to Google.

But what of those who’ve not a clue of what I speak? What about those who’ll be wondering what this “Content is king” hocus-pocus is all about? Well bear with me, my good fellow, for indeed I was just getting to it.

"Content is king" is an age-old and much clichéd maxim based on the idea that the more unique, informative and fresh content you have in your web pages, the better for your website. And it's one I approve of most heartily, even if I disaprove of the rather pompous wording.

You see, the boys over at Google appreciate a good read as much as the next man, and if you’re providing this on your website it saves them both time and money that would otherwise be spent down their local bookshop. This leaves them with time on their hands to engage in more worthwhile pursuits, such as a spot of horticulture, basket weaving, brass rubbing, or the formulating of plans to take over the world.

If you’re making Google happy, then they may even look favourably upon your website. Imagine that, becoming the apple of Google’s eye. Isn’t that one of the things that gives us webmasters a reason to get out of bed in the morning? Isn’t that what we all want?

The more well-written content, the better, and if it’s regularly updated to boot, then you’re onto a winner from the off. The Google lads don’t just like a good read, they like their read to be regularly updated and added to. It saves buying a newspaper of the morning.

Complying with this wish will show commitment and instills trust and confidence in your website, suggesting that you are serious about your endeavour and not just in it on the off-chance of a quick earner.

This is one of the chief reasons that SEOs applaud and actively participate in blogging. It’s a wonderful device for not only providing fresh, informative content that will be of use to others - building a community around your brand and services;  but also for keeping a regular supply of new material flowing through your website.

And that’s “Content is king” in the simplest of nutshells. Or, to strip away any uncertainty that my loosely coherent sentences may leave up in the air: Well-written content and lots of it = one of the many factors that bear a direct relation upon search engine rankings.

And that’s what we want.

Anyways, back to the Essence SEO homepage, which is where I started this post, seemingly about a fortnight ago.

We had perhaps taken this idea a little too far, for although we had a homepage that provided plenty of information that was unique and indeed well-written (I thenkyo), it just seemed to be too much, too overwhelming; not getting the point across to the potential customer in no uncertain terms.

A case of not being able to see the wood for the trees if ever there was one.

And as Jeff Quipp of Search Engine People once told me, roughly only 16% of people actually read what’s on a webpage. The other 84% just scan and take away from it what it is they specifically want, largely ignoring the rest. For that reason I can insert something like Goat’s Head Soup in this sentence and only 16% of you will have noticed.

Now as a man involved in copywriting too, I know the importance of the message and how getting it across in the plainest of terms drives sales writing. So I stripped the text back to the barest of bones, chewed it up, and then spat it out. From here I rebuilt, concentrating on what SEO and its benefits are as opposed to losing the user in a mountain of words. The rest of the site, and this here blog, are there for the more lyrical of waxings. The homepage should always be considered as you would any landing page, and kept relevant and to the point, like a finely honed arrow-head. It should offer the user the best ROI - the investment being their time - and if you’re not getting your point across in the first paragraph, there’s every chance they’ll quickly be off mooching elsewhere, not even stopping to partake of the complimentary barley sugars.

In fact, the whole site is presently undergoing a micro overhaul, with a good deal of fine-tuning hither and thither, and new pages being added to the main website. Additional keyword phrases are being targeted that are within a more achievable reach for a four month old website, as competing for high value keywords against websites that have been around for ten or so years, is setting you on a hiding to nothing and something we’d never dream of suggesting to a client.

So Essence SEO has come down from the ivory tower and we’re endeavouring to give the user what they expect to find. The moral of this tale being: Practice what you preach. Hereby endeth the lesson.

And if there's anybody other than me still reading this, here's the bit you've both been waiting for: The answer to last week's poser. In Blogger's Scourge... I promised a drink to anybody who could tell me the connection between the post and the images I used. Fortunately for me nobody did, although a couple of people did suggest "Back in the saddle", which is possibly better than the actual answer.

Anyway, the images came from a Spaghetti Western called Il Grande Silenzio, or 'The Great Silence'. See what I did there?

More borderline certifiability next time.