All nice, that SEO, but what is it really?

The other day, I was asked by someone if I would explain what that SEO is all about now. Everyone is talking about it and apparently it is quite important for your website? Maybe it is, is usually my answer.

You used to not need SEO

SEO is an English term that stands for Search Engine Optimization. In Dutch we call it search engine optimisation. You used to not need that at all. Do you remember Startpagina.co.uk? That was a website with a list of all kinds of websites. And that website in turn had websites derived from it, such as zomer.startpagina.nl with everything about summer.

Home pages, and other so-called "directories" (lists of websites) like dmoz.org, made sure you didn't have to search. They gave you the best websites by topic, and you would visit those.

Whether those were really the best websites, we didn't think enough about that.

But what exactly is SEO?

Yes, yes, grandpa tells. But what is that SEO then? In the Netherlands, you had Ilse.nl, which was sort of a combination between a directory (list of websites), a news site and a search engine, or so I remember. I mostly used altavista.com. It doesn't matter very much, because when Google came, visitor numbers from the other search engines slowly declined. With the success of Google, google, as a synonym for looking something up on Google's website, one word.

Microsoft has launched the search engine Bing.com, China Baidu.com and Russia Yandex.com, but in the Netherlands we don't even talk about that when we talk about SEO. Here we use Google.

SEO is optimising your website for search engines.

But that is way too short. That includes a host of technical optimisation, and just stinking good text writing, but Google is getting better at looking at the user of your website. Google is becoming more human.

SEO, human view

As Google becomes more human, to get to the top, you will not only have to provide the right information, but also unlock that information in the right way. You can think about:

The right homepage, welcoming the visitor and guiding them across your website;
the right menu structure, allowing visitors to quickly click through to the desired page;
good internal links on your website, so visitors can quickly find related information, and it becomes clear to Google which page should rank for which keyword (indeed, you can "indicate" that by placing the right links).
Images and video provided to illustrate your texts, so that the visitor enjoys absorbing all your information;
a good title and headings, so visitors can scan your texts and still know what it is about.

Top of the iceberg. Of course. For optimal SEO, you'll need to start viewing your website as... a visitor.

By now, it is clear that Google puts that first. Fine to optimise texts, but if you take it too far, your text becomes unreadable. And Google doesn't like that at all either.

SEO is everything and SEO makes sense

SEO is everything that happens on your website. SEO is user experience, or ease of use, and SEO is conversion rate optimisation, or conversion optimisation. By using SEO in the right way, you get a finer website that scores better and sells better.

Because you've seen your website so many times, you're going to miss things that make perfect sense.

That could be, for example, that menu with 200 links. You find it convenient that those are there, your visitor would have preferred a search option. You think those big images are brilliant, your visitor has to wait a fraction longer for information, either because of a longer loading time or because they have to scroll first. You like that chat function, your visitor wants to look around first.

Very logical. And quite quick to solve, in most cases.

SEO is user optimisation

Search engine optimisation is user optimisation. And then some technical things like making your information as easy as possible to present to Google (schema.org), getting your invitation to the visitor in Google right (meta description), and making it very clear what your page is about (title). And so on.

But if you ask me what you now, today can do to experience the power of SEO, then my answer is simple. You just have to ask your partner to click through your website. And list everything he/she doesn't find logical. If you leave or start adjusting those things, you are rocking SEO.

Should you feel the need to spar, please contact me!