The Brand Factory's Branding Blog

SEO: What are you sacrificing?

Devin Anderson Added 4 months ago

The myth: In order to be ranked highly by search engines, you need to use the exact words, in the exact order that they are being typed into Google - more often than your competitors.

A couple of things happen when you (or your hired SEO) attempt to conform to this myth.

1) Articles and web pages become needlessly long in order to fit in more 'keywords'

2) The copy becomes repetitive and boring – or even worse; incomprehensible and fillied with grammatical errors

3) You end up saying the same things as your competitors.

By chasing that Page 1 ranking, your message has been smothered by lengthy,

keyword-stuffed sentences. And your unique brand is now no more visible on the results page than it was before you began.

What's the point in being on the first page if you're selling the same message as the other nine people around you? So your point of difference is that you're higher in Google than your competitors? That's great, but it's really not saying anything unique or interesting about your company.

The Truth: Keyword inclusion in website copy is only one of many factors that search-engines use to determine page rankings.

While keywords do play an important role, what you say about your business is arguably more important. As David Ogilvy pointed out, it’s the language you use to speak to your prospects that determines if you’ll make a connection with them:

“If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think.” – David Ogilvy

However, this does not mean repeating their search query to them sixty-four times a minute. A much better approach is to include your keywords (and variations of them) two or three times in your article or blog - then focus on making sure you answer your prospects’ question or solve their problem.

If your SEO advisor complains that this will make his or her job more difficult, they’re right. Tell them to build better links.

Do your research, put your keywords in your page title and URL extensions, but if you have something more interesting to say in the header of an article than “Best Law Firm in Sydney”, then by all means, say it.

SEO is a balancing act. Getting found by your prospects is only half the battle - you still have to convince them that you are what they have been searching for.

The Brand Factory will soon be launching a new website optimisation service. If you need someone to plan and execute your SEO efforts, we’ll be there to help you.

 

Tech: CU3MBUM3ZBVC

---

Posted by Devin Anderson at 11:09 am 0 Comments