Tech

Renaming and Redefining SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Matt Cutts, the SEO guru and spam assassin at Google, recently asked if SEO (search engine optimization) should be called something else.

My thoughts on renaming SEO:

(1) We should not optimize (improve to achieve the best possible condition) a website primarily for search engines, but for human users and search engines.

(2) User experience, usability, credibility, information foraging, navigational quality, and other human-centric factors are of supreme importance, but we must also look "under the hood" of a website's code and tweak the title tags, meta description tags, H1 tags, geotags, document type declarations, image alt attributes, robots protocols, XML sitemaps, favicon, etc.

(3) Content must be optimized, or else what's the point of driving customer traffic to the website? Content must be authoritative, easy to skim and scan, frequent, relevant, fresh, written in user language, original, not copied and pasted, not thin but also not too prolix, with good use of internal and external links and anchor text, rich but not stuffed with appropriate keywords and synonyms, tied in with news and viral topics, and satisfying to users who are looking for answers and information.

(4) User Query Optimization is perhaps a better way to describe SEO, in that user queries (the words people type into search engines) are what you want to attract, and the query phrases are constantly changing as are the search volumes per query. You want to optimize the content and HTML values of your website so that a specific page on your website is the perfect and most complete answer to a user's question.

(5) A better term for SEO should encompass User Query Optimization, Usability, Credibility, Search Engine Algorithm Compliance, Google Webmaster Guidelines Compliance, Landing Page Marketing Savvy, and Traffic Conversion Optimization (actually getting people to buy a product, sign up for a newsletter, watch a video, or whatever your business goals are).

What we see in the correct understanding of SEO is the convergence of web design, usability, business writing, marketing savvy, text layout, HTML coding, linking strategy, and sales psychology.

The goal is to achieve a website that not only looks good and communicates what the company wishes to convey to customers, but also conforms to best practices of HTML coding, that complies with search engine requirements for ranking a given web page as relevant and of value to user queries.

About the Author

Steven Streight is a man of many skills. He’s a talented writer, web content developer, internet marketing consultant and photographer. He’s a trustee on the Peoria Historical Society, a member of SCORE Peoria and the author of the Peoria technology history book, “Bicycle Fever.” In his downtime, he’s hangs out with his beloved Min Pin and tries to get some rest. Considering how involved he is in the community, it sounds like he could use as much as he can get.