I’ve been working in the SEO industry now for just under three months. Trying to get your head round it can be a bit hard sometimes, so I try to think of a website as a living entity. Think of your site as your own body. Link building is food, on page SEO is exercise, social media is human interaction and think of the search engine as someone you would like to go out with (bear with me, it should make sense as we go on).
I’ll start with link building, you need to build your energy and sustain yourself by eating. You are what you eat and so it would be better for you to eat one healthy meal, than to eat five burgers. If we extend this analogy to link building, build a few good links and your site will have more reach and a better quality reach; build a load of poor links and this will affect the quality and quantity of traffic being driven to your site.
Let’s go with on page SEO now. As I mentioned above, think of on page SEO as exercise and generally looking after your body. You need to keep your body well maintained, so you might go to the gym or join a sports team. This keeps your body in good shape and minimises health issues. Now, think of your site. You need to keep your site in good shape, optimise it to the right levels and reduce any errors. This is not just for the benefit of the search engine, the end user is of paramount importance as well. What reasons do you have for keeping yourself in good shape? To look after yourself would be one, but to make yourself look more attractive is probably up there as well. So eating well and keeping in shape will contribute towards the initial attraction of someone you want to go out with. If we think of this now from a search engine’s perspective, this is the first thing they will notice.
So, Google has come up to you in the bar now, because they are attracted to you. But now you have to have the good personality to match and this is where social media comes in. As human beings we are attracted to people who are sociable and people who build good relationships. Your site needs to interact with other social media users to build good virtual relationships and so they have an influential social presence. If you are anti-social and don’t interact with other people, this will radiate to Google.
So eat well, exercise and talk to people and Google will fancy you.
