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Content Critical
Gaining competitive advantage through high-quality web content
The Web
Content
Style Guide
The essential guide
for online writers, editors and managers
March 14, 2005
Search optimization, not search engine optimization
By Gerry McGovern
Search optimization focuses on how people search. Search engine optimization focuses on how search engines work. Search optimization sees quality web content as its foundation stone.
In an age of information overload, how is your website going to get found? Because if it’s not found, it might as well not exist, and all your effort will be in vain. Every day, millions of people use search engines to find things. A significant majority of these people will not go beyond the first page of search results, and most people will stop searching by the third page.
However, if you want to succeed with search engines in the long term, you should not primarily focus on how the search engine works. Rather, you should focus on how the brain of the searcher works. Because if you understand how people search, you’re halfway there to getting found when they search for your content.
It all comes down to a small set of words. (I call these words “carewords”; the words people really care about.) The searcher is the modern equivalent of the hunter gatherer. They go out hunting and gathering content in order to complete a task. It’s very important to understand that searching is just the first step in this task completion.
Making sure your content is found in the first page of search results is a great start, but it is only a start. Until the person has completed the task they came to your website to complete, then nothing of substance has been achieved.
People want to make a reservation, renew a license, find out more about a course, etc. Therefore, we need to see search optimization in the context of the task. In reality, what you need to focus on is task optimization. How many customers bought your product today? How many citizens availed of your service today? How many students applied for a place at your university today?
The focus of this series of articles is on how you can optimize your website for how people search. I will explore why linking is so crucial to success. I will explore how you can create content that significantly increases your chances of being found, as well as increasing the chances of task completion.
I was recently thinking of renting a holiday home in Spain, so I searched for: “Spanish holiday homes”. I clicked on the first search result, and this is the text I read.
Spain Holiday Rentals
Holiday rentals in Spain for holidays in Spain
Spain Holiday Rentals directly from the owners. Rent Spanish holiday homes - a holiday villa or perhaps a holiday apartment in Spain. Spain vacation rentals for holidays in Spain are easily located by searching a Spain holiday home on our website. Spain Holiday Rental offer Spanish holiday homes for your next Spain vacation.
This content is excellently written from a search engine optimization
perspective. The carewords (Spain, holiday, rentals, etc.) are prominent and
repeated often. However, this content doesn’t seem credible to me. I don’t
get a sense of trustworthiness off it. In fact, it reads to me like spam,
and that made me quickly hit the Back button.
Remember, getting people to your website is just the first step. Having them
complete the task is ultimately what it’s all about.
Gerry McGovern
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