Okay people, remember when I screamed in this space that so far, social media had given me nothing but carpal tunnel syndrome? Well since then, I've used social media to organize a pretty tidy following—and, believe it or not, actually generate some revenue—in and around the speechwriting and executive communication space.
So now I'm more or less resigned to spending half my time writing the newspaper and the other half delivering it (via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and You Boob).
I've seen the results, I'm pleased I don't have to rent or buy or steal proprietary mailing lists to sell my wares, and I'm grateful for all the patient guidance I've received along the way, from Shel Holtz and all others to whom I've intemperately appealed over the years.
But now I'm enraged and confused about something else.
Now I'm learning it's not enough to write a wonderful newspaper and deliver it five minutes later. Now,we're told, if we're going to get read by more than friends and family, we must do a thing called "SEO," which stands for "search engine optimization," which, as far as I can tell, is a bunch of utter hogwash designed to keep "SEO experts" employed and writers doing some kind of crazy-ass pagan dance, hoping for something that's never going to come.
As a friend puts it, "You'll begin getting 10,000 daily hits and stuffing your pillow cases with advertising revenue."
Hey, I'd love to be wrong about this.
And I wouldn't be alone among troubled and confused solid writers, like Kent State University's Bill Sledzik.
He's the most popular PR professor in the blogosphere.
But listen to the poor bastard:
"I've never been comfortable
with the concept of SEO. It’s like having a wizard behind the curtain
who’s trying to manipulate reality. But it’s clear that I would benefit
from an SEO strategy. … I don’t use this blog to market anything, so does it really matter?… Still, I feel negligent that I’ve left my search traffic entirely to chance."
Sledzik, master of all he surveys, grizzly standard bearer to thousands of Kent PR students, doesn't know whether to shit or wind his wrist watch.
And neither do I!
I've spent a decade as an amateur and two as a professional learning to "write for your audience." Now these SEO goons are trying to tell me to write for some unimagined strangers who might stumble drunkenly onto my website if only I put in enough tantalizing key words that I may or may not be perverted enough to even guess at.
I'm going round and round on this stuff with a publisher right now. We both want more traffic for our websites. And I acknowledge that some of my headlines are more likely to lure people in by keywords than others.
"Friday Follies," for instance, is a headline that won't draw lots of searches, I bet. (Who but a hopeless fop searches for "follies"?) But it's a crap headline to begin with, so I'm fine with doing something different.
But another headline I wrote recently—"The Way Most Employees Receive Most Presentations from Management"—strikes me as one that might actually draw some traffic. And it's a solid headline for my audience of speechwriters and employee communication people.
So my man at the publisher plugs this into his SEO Combobulatory Combibulatum, which tallies which phrases receive the most searches ("presentations from management" doesn't get any searches, but "management presentation" gets 40,500 searches per month) and tells me that a better SEO headline would be "How an Employee Receives a Management Presentation."
He's the one with the SEO machine, so I guess I have to grant him that the second headline might draw in more blind staggerers. But I'm trained to write for my audience, and my audience—my bread and butter, the crowd that's been reading me and paying my way for two decades—will not be nearly as fondly enticed by the SEO-correct headline than by my original.
So here's my terms regarding SEO—Shel Holtz help ice cream oral sex Tiger Woods, please talk me off the ledge: Publishers, if you're gonna ruin my headlines by making them SEO-friendly, you're gonna do it yourself. You can't ask me to do it myself. Can you?
The whole thing reminds me of another publisher I worked for, who told the self-respecting graphic designer, "Ugly sells."
And what was she supposed to do about that?
There’s no doubt, you’re either an artiste or you’re making money. Choose one.
There is a slight compromise possible: having a sub-headline. One headline for money, one for artistry, and one ring to bind them.
Not an artiste, Yossi. Just a communicator. A good headline draws my natural audience into each article and tells them in advance: I see the world with your eyes. Now let’s come over here and look at this. That inspires loyalty among readers and helps them trust you.
When SEO is the first consideration, it seems to me you write headlines that take your core audience for granted in hopes that you’ll snag a stranger in your net.
This seems antithetical to every communication principle I know. (And simple logic, too!)
Well, I don’t use any overt SEO, and I’m happy with my footprint online.
I think my post today is relevant to this. You don’t need to reach everyone, David. You need to be ever more important to the tribe you already reach (and their closest friends and colleagues). I think you’re doing great at that.
btw, SEO started out simply. Website creators, and later website writers, simply wrote the best they could about the topic they loved or were expert in, and thereby drew in the people who searched for such topics.
The SEO Combubulus HyperBobulator was used to confuse you. Searched words do not mean they want you. The 40k+ people who searched for management presentations were not searching for an article about employee reaction to management presentations. They probably wanted to know how to put together their own presentation. If they get your website instead, they’ll be royally vituperative about wasting a click on the wrong content. And hate you forever.
Stick to SEO for your main audience – executive communication, writing, communication in general – and do it naturally, and skip the HyperSEO supermen who want every click on the planet to land on your page.
I’d much rather reach one reader who finds value in what I’ve written, and who therefore decides that I’m the person who can help solve their problems, than to reach 10,000 readers who wonder why they landed on my page — 5,000 of whom will leave anonymous, irrelevant, hate-filled comments as a result.
SEO has jumped the shark, at least in terms of “organic” search. There’s way too much content out there, and the users struggle to find RELEVANT content. The search marketing industry is focusing ever more on the advertising side of SEO — enacting steps so that when you, in Chicago, Ill., West Loop, Google “Plumber”, the search marketers deliver paid listings, banner ads, etc., from their client who is a plumber in the West Loop or near environs.
Just wait to see what’s in your spam filter after today’s hed…
Fight the good fight, David.
@Seth: Relevant indeed. Thanks for your usual calm wisdom on this.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/01/strangers-critics-friends-or-fans.html
@Yossi … if those SEO machines do little more than confuse people, then we’re back to the future. Remember “H.I.T.S.” from 15 years ago? (How Idiots Track Success?)
@Robert: Agree with your principle, but ultimately I’d like to have 10,000 readers who find value in what I write. (And of course, my reasoning is: “Who, given a chance to see my wonderful work, wouldn’t find some value?!?”) So I don’t blithely dismiss suggestions for reaching more people. (I angrily dismiss them.)
Sean: I may be wrong, but I actually think the Internet is 100 times more satisfyingly searchable now than it was 10 years ago, when people were still “surfing” it, and also comparing it to the world’s greatest library–with all the books in a big pile. So whatever tricky SEO stuff people are doing to con strangers to their sites, we’re still much more likely to get where we’re going. I guess we have Google geniuses to thank for this?
Well, there’s SEO and there’s SEO. As far as I’m concerned, a good writer is already practicing most of the principles of sound SEO — using the most important words for which people might be searching early in the piece. They taught that to me in journalism school — news writing 101 — in 1972.
The kind of SEO you’re talking about is practiced by businesses who want to appear high up in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) ahead of their competitors. Let’s face it: If your content isn’t found in the first page or two of results, it won’t be found by most people at all. Like it or not, it’s a reality.
There are people who game SEO and use unethical tactics, and I despise these folks. But there are also sound and ethical SEO practices I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss as bullshit. In fact, I taught an entire Webinar on SEO for communicators.
The fact is, search is the primary means by which online content is found, and if yours is on page 88 of the results pages, you won’t get read. Sorry about that. Reality sucks, doesn’t it?
“As far as I’m concerned, a good writer is already practicing most of the principles of sound SEO” – and David, you’re a good writer.
It all will come down to who you are, who your audience is, what type of audience they are, and whether or not you are looking to expand.
Seth’s right, you’re better off sticking with your tribe, which means SEO beyond what you’re already doing – exactly what Shel was discussing – is largely unnecessary.
However, there are little things that are good to know in case you ever want to change them. For example, if I search for “David Murray” on Google, this blog comes up on the first page. But the title is “Writing Boots” which has no context. I would have no idea it’s David Murray’s blog if I had never been here. Most likely, I’d skip right over it.
However, it the title was “Writing Boots, a blog by David Murray” (or something less pretentious), that would help. That title is EXACTLY the kind of quick change you can make via SEO. WordPress even has plugins to allow you to do this.
PS – On that note, the description on Google after your title is “Jan 23, 2010 … Like the time the phrase, ‘David Murray is a dickhead” slipped into the middle of a story and went to print and the terrified employees hid …’.” Hilarious and very much classic David, but at the same time not helpful to anyone, not even your tribe.
Wow! Since I’m the guy who doesn’t know whether to “shit or wind his watch,” I’m leaning a good bit from this discussion. First lesson: Don’t take a day off from the blogosphere. You might miss out on chatting with David Murray, Shel Holtz and Seth Godin.
Screw SEO. The tweets from that alone would probably double my blog traffic!
While I’m not comfortable writing for algorithms vs. readers, I can no longer ignore SEO. Sure, optimization will pull in readers who don’t care about public relations. But it’ll also bring in many who do — I think.
So I’m gonna try it, just to see what happens. And if my numbers jump, I’ll tell the dean he should give me a promotion based on my skyrocketing influence 🙂 I think he’ll buy it!
Seth appears to have the right answer. You don’t have to be overt about SEO. Just stay loyal to your audience/tribe and learn all you can about the search phrases they use.
If that doesn’t work, I’ll write posts about LeBron James and Bruce Springsteen. You can have Tiger Woods and oral sex, David. I mean, you got here first.
Yeah, great conversation here, y’all. Thanks for all your insights. I’d turn to “crowdsourcing” more often if the crowds were always this wise.
First be comfortable with a quote from JR Ewing of Dallas fame,
“Once you get past honesty, integrity is a piece of cake.”
Think of SEO as you would a headline writer for an old school newspaper, he’ll say something like this, “Oh sure it’s not quiet the thrust of the piece, but do you want this above the fold on 4D?”
OK now, throw in a little SEO response to that search engine Al Gore Rhythm. See this funky beat determines how important you are by having other important people link to you, even if some of those people are part of your SEO mafia orchestrated to link in time.
See piece of cake
SEO is only hogwash as much as PR is — comments made based on ignorance by a lot of folks (those who let the bad apples represent an entire industry in their minds).
SEOs who use “tricks” like keyword stuffing are jokes. As others have mentioned, good writers already tend to rank well naturally (even if not always quickly). It mostly comes down to links (well that and keyword research so you know what your audience is really looking for). If you give people something worth linking to and sharing, that’s all you really have to know about SEO. Play games and you’ll have to play them indefinitely because those “tricks” are eventually trumped by algorithmic changes with the SEs.
Haha I finally understood your post title half way through reading it. At first I was starting to believe I’d drunkenly stumbled to this blog. But it proves a great point, these SEO tricks will provide a flash in the pan, but don’t truly sustain traffic to a website. Producing great content that builds loyal readership is the best way to sustain traffic because a happy reader will share it with their friends, and that’s the best marketing there is.
It’s an unfortunate dance we have to do, but that’s the marketplace right now, and if you’re not doing your seo you’re going to be left behind because everyone else is. It’s come to the “keeping up with the Jones’s” standard, where somebody starts some internet trend and once everyone jumps on you’re forced to do the same otherwise everyone else will move ahead of you, and being at the back of the line is never a good thing.
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