The amazing thing about the practice of search engine optimization (and search engine marketing, or SEM) is that it crosses so many boundaries. I come from a web design background (started in the late 1990s), so I always had familiarity with SEO and input the basics when building a website, even in the Web 1.0 days. However, I got heavy into SEO when studying social media and digital marketing in my M.S. program at Georgia State University. So I thought of these as marketing disciplines rather than something else. Going into bookstores, however, I would find SEM/PPC and social media in the marketing section (presumably because it is “advertising”) but not SEO. SEO books would not be in the programming section, but in the graphic and web design section (beside books on Photoshop, Fireworks, and prominent web design firms and trends). This fascinates me because I thought of SEO as more the copywriter’s role, or the social media marketer’s role, or even the developer/programmer’s role than the designer’s. But, it did fit my own progression, so perhaps there was some alignment there.
Regardless, the fascinating thing about SEO is that I believe it applies to all aforementioned parties. How can a copywriter write good, organic web copy without knowing any SEO principles? How can a marketer plan online marketing strategies and campaigns without understanding the principles, role, and value of SEO? And how can a developer build a site without knowing how to execute SEO essentials in the code and server documents? Arguably, all these are the roles of a good SEO practitioner. But it is essential that the other parties grasp the value and process involved for best success. And with that, let’s throw another role onto the table—the web project manager. How else can we know when to incorporate and ask questions of the SEO in the total web creation process?
Organic content strategy (and hence social media) plays heavily with SEO. It is the honey that attracts searchers, binds media, and fills the architecture. Because content crosses so many media, it makes sense. So think of it that way. Read this book, learn the value of SEO and how to execute it, and meet the web user goals you want met. Best success to you and your WordPress blog and/or website—the World Wide Web awaits!
1. What Is SEO and Do I Really Need It?
Chapter objectives and questions:
• Understand the role and value of search engine optimization (SEO) and content strategy.
• Understand search engine history, the “long tail,” and modern application.
• Understand what WordPress is and how it begins to factor into SEO.
• Provide an overview of SEO in today’s digital world.
A Day in Your Life...
So you wake up one morning, wonder what to wear, and decide to check the weather. You have a client meeting 40 miles away, so you check the weather app on your smartphone, input the location, and see what the temperature will be.
You aren’t sure how casual or formal the office and personnel are, so you Google them to see their website. A photo comes up in the Images results on the Google SERP (or search engine results page; the listings from your search), and you click through to their WordPress website with more office photos and see that it looks formal. But what about your direct contact? How formal is she? You look her up in LinkedIn and finally determine that your brown sport coat is definitely required. Okay, now what color shirt would look the best? You search Google Images for “brown sport coat outfits” and see some possibilities you like for combining blue shirts with brown coats. Then you click through to a WordPress eCommerce site with a blog on fashion and search for related opinion posts and comments.
Next, you pull up your map app on your iPhone to identify the best route to take. What about coffee en route? You look in Yelp to see locations and reviews—you don’t want a place that will take too long. You find one and click through to the shop’s mobile website (a progressive WordPress mobile site) to ensure you’ll recognize the photo from the street.
You hit the road, find and pull into the coffee shop drive-through, and place your order. It looks like a nice place—you’ll have to come back. You search for them in Foursquare, “check in,” and save their profile in your “To-Do List.” You click through, “Like” it, and hashtag post about it in Facebook so that others might search and find it there.
As you drive longer, you ask Siri (the voice-driven info service on the iPhone) to locate the office on your map. You arrive early (thanks to the route you searched), park, and sit in the car, pull out your tablet, and decide to take care of a couple things before your meeting.
So the world of search is always with us. When we’re online, we’re searching.
A (Brief) History of SEO
In the early years of search engines—as with their predecessors, computer programming commands—the search engines couldn’t understand or accurately cater to the syntaxes of common phraseology, statements, and questions. To achieve the search engine results we wanted, we had to learn to think, and talk, like the search engines—with keywords and query strings. Ironically, as time progressed, several things happened:
• We spent more and more time online (and more time in search engines).
• We learned how to think more like search engines (and also to filter out ad results and fruitless directory/landing page results).
We went from using myriad search engines with scattered results to identifying a favorite search engine (and speaking its language; for example, AskJeeves, which today is Ask.com).
• Simultaneously, the search engine(s) grew wise to human phraseology and contextual keyword search. Suddenly, a word was not merely a literal word from a dictionary, but search results were affected by the surrounding words.
• MSN attempted to compete with Google using a new search engine also planted on Yahoo!—Bing.
• The search engines grew with semantic interpretation of keywords, integrating search history, social media content data, and web user interest to affect search results.
• And Google was king.
Google is still king. It keeps releasing notable updates, and YouTube (also part of Google) is considered the world’s second largest search engine. Google’s other search properties include Google Blog Search, Google Images, Google Books, and so on.
Bing, although small in use compared to Google, keeps trying. (At the time of writing this book, Google is at 67% and Bing is at 29% of web search engine usage; see http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2289560/Googles-Search-Market-Share-Shoots-Back-to-67.) But Yahoo! (which still represents 11% of web search engine usage while utilizing Bing as its current search engine) has many legacy search content sites and directories that haven’t completely died yet. Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Sports, and Yahoo! Local are just a few. For obvious reasons, Bing is the default search engine and common home page for Microsoft hardware and Internet Explorer; consequently, it acquires use that way. It will be interesting to see what Yahoo! does going forward with its efforts in publicity. Many big-name search engines that were popular prior to Google have withered to almost nothing. RIP AltaVista, Lycos, and Netscape.
What’s the Long Tail—and Just How Long Is It?
We can’t talk about SEO and its history without chatting about the “long tail.” So bear with me while I explain this critical attribute to search marketing strategy.
In the 1890s, a little-known company called Sears and Roebuck started mailing catalogs—first of watches and jewelry, then of general merchandise. It revolutionized business. The company was able to offer a broad variety of items to people all over the country. What someone in Maine didn’t want out of the catalog, someone in San Francisco might buy. And because their products didn’t involve multiple shipments, multiple warehouses, and
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