SEO for Normal People: A Metaphor
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) sounds like scary, black magic. Google is the proverbial Wizard of Oz with its highly guarded search engine algorithms that determine how well (if at all) your website will be included in their system. A favorable, high listing in search engine results can be a priceless advantage for you and your organization. And while some SEO is out of your reach or best left to experienced professionals, there are some fundamental building blocks that you control that absolutely affect your site’s ranking in search engine results.
For sake of easy understanding, the following is a metaphor to explain how a search engine may find and index your website. Imagine you want to learn as much as possible about a brick-and-mortar business named “Spacely Sprockets” that is located in a neighboring city. You haven’t been there before, but your friend mentioned it over beers1 yesterday.
As you set to learn as much as possible about Spacely Sprockets, you drive to the nearby city and see the Chamber of Commerce/Rotary Club sign2 that lists Spacely Sprockets as one of its proud members. Good to know you’re at least in the right city! A few blocks later you see a street named “Spacely Sprockets Avenue”3. You’re impressed that Spacely Sprockes has a street named after it; clearly they’re legitimate business and have been around a while.
While driving down the avenue, it’s easy to spot the business as “SPACELY SPROCKETS” lettering clearly adorns the face of the building4. Excellent — you found it! Now what heck the do they do?
You walk into the business and introduce yourself to the receptionist. You notice a large sign5 in the waiting room bolding stating “Spacely Sprockets: Innovative Sprockets for Automotive & Aerospace Manufacturing.” Interesting, but you want to know more.
The receptionist invites you tour the office space to learn more about the business. Of course no receptionist would do this in real life, but bear with me — this is a metaphor!
You walk down the corridor and see a building directory sign6 for the various divisions of the business: Sprocket Research & Development, Human Resources, Marketing & Communications, Engineering, Sales, Manufacturing, and Customer Support. You’re really inside the mothership now! You’re getting an insider’s access to learn about Spacely Sprockets.
You turn right into the Manufacturing wing7 where you quickly find yourself amongst robotic arms quickly welding sprockets as employees do final assembly. Boxes finished of finished products labeled “Wheel Assembly Sprockets” and “Rubber Coated Spockets” and “Titanium Sprockets” whiz by on conveyors. A nearby sales engineer notices your interest and invites you to share a cup of coffee to learn more about his line of Aerospace sprocket products.
He takes you to a side room whose walls are covered in product posters and schematics8. You’re about learn more than you ever wanted to know about aerospace sprockets. After the sales engineer talks your ear off, you’re ready to meander thru the facility by yourself. You thank him for his time (and coffee) and set off alone.
Everyone at Spacely Sprockets is busy working so you’re able to walk around unnoticed. You can listen to conversations naturally occurring in the customer support boiler room, in sales and product development. You start to hear the some comments repeated over and over such as “…our sprockets are indestructible”….and “…we have the fastest delivery in the world….” as well as “…we use a patented titanium alloy in all our products.” You’re not exactly sure what this all means, but it’s said so often you have to take notice9.
Hours have passed by since you started your unannounced visit and you’ve decided you’ve had a day’s fill of sprocket information. Perhaps a lifetime’s worth. You thank the receptionist for your unfettered (and truly unimaginable) access and drive away.
It’s dinner time, so it’s best to stop for some food and drink. A ha! The local bar and grill looks great10. You enter and take a seat at the bar to order the daily special. A group of young guys sits at a nearby table arguing over which Spacely Sprocket is best used in a motorcycle. Their enthusiastic conversation, likely encouraged by by the empty pitcher of beer, can’t be ignored by the other patrons. You can’t help but listen in and be entertained by how these vocal Spacely Sprocket customers candidly discuss the company you’ve just toured. You make a few amusing mental notes, finish your sandwich and head back home.
And that’s basically what a search engine does. 24/7/365.
Here‘s a review of the 10 examples and how they relate to optimizing your website for search engines. Remember, you’re a search engine – not a human being.
- You learned about the “Spacely Sprockets” business via a conversation in social media, say on a Facebook wall posting or blog comment. Since you’re a self-respecting search engine and haven’t heard of this business, you’re determined to find more information.
- A local Chamber of Commerce/Rotary sign could be a 3rd party directory listing such as AngiesList.com, a city website listing local businesses or a link from someone’s blogroll. It doesn’t matter — it’s just a link from another place. And the more credible the referring site is, the better.
- Spacely Sprockets Avenue equivalent to a domain name. Having the actual company name in the domain is great; having your primary product in it (”sprockets”) is even better.
- The building lettering for “SPACELY SPROCKETS” is the page title (
TITLE) tag. It’s the name displayed in the very top of the browser window. - The “Spacely Sprockets: Innovative Sprockets for Automotive & Aerospace Manufacturing” poster is equivalent to the (
H1) heading tag. It’s the hit-you-over-the-head-with-what-we-do statement displayed in big letters on a web page. - The building directory sign is a site’s navigation system and/or your sitemap page. It gives site visitors and search engine spiders a quick summary of what’s located where on your site and how to get there.
- The “Manufacturing” wing is equivalent to the name of site section that houses information on all the various type of Sprockets created.
- The “side room whose walls are covered in product posters and schematics” represents a product/family specific web page/section. It has all the nitty gritty product details including specs, available sizes and ordering information to name but a few options.
- The phrase “You’re not exactly sure what this all means, but it’s said so often you have to take notice…” represents keyword density. Terms and phrases that are repeated enough to comprise 2-3% of web page’s total page copy get noticed more by search engines.
- Finally the “local bar and grill” represents a typical 3rd party blog where anyone can comment and debate the merits of Space Sprocket products.
While search engine optimization is an art/science unto itself, this metaphor gives you an idea of various steps involved in getting a website properly indexed and what you can do to increase the chances of it happening.
Phew — long post!
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Andrea Hill on January 20, 2009 @ 9:09 pm
This is great, Gary! It IS a long post, so I’ll admit I skipped down to read the footnotes about halfway through, then went back
It reads really well, reminding me of the CommonCraft videos (social media in plain English).
I’ll definitely forward this to others, it does a great job at explaining all the different intricacies of SEO