There
are two ways to use SEO to help your organization. One is reliable and
effective, the other is a glorious crap shoot that usually fails but is
wonderful when it works. I’ll start with the second.
The most
common way to use search engine optimization is to find a keyword (like
“plumbing”) and do whatever you can to ‘own’ that word on Google. This
is Google as the Yellow Pages (with free ads).
The Yellow Pages
are terrific for plumbers, because if you need a plumber, that’s where
you’re going to look. Buy the biggest ad, be the first listing, you get
calls. Google is a revelation because it’s a super Yellow Pages and
it’s free! The problem: how to be the first listing, because being the
40th listing is fairly worthless.
The answer: You probably won’t
be. There are 14 million matches for Plumber, and no, you won’t be #1
or #2. You lost. In fact, in just about every keyword worth owning,
your chances are winning are small.
(To the .00001% of the people reading this who win–congratulations. You can ignore this post.)
This
method is so appealing because it’s all about converting the
non-converted. For free, you show up in front of people who didn’t know
about you and you get your shot to convert them. This is the marketer’s
dream.
Am I saying it’s not worth trying to win? Of course not.
If you can give it a shot for the right set of keywords and not spend
too much or count too much on winning, then go for it. But the other
method is a lot more compelling (and, yes, you can do both at the same
time).
The other way to use SEO is a bit more organic. (Let’s call it the White Pages approach). It involves owning a keyword that you already own. Do a search on ShoeMoney in Google and you’ll find 340,000 matches. Wanna guess who’s first? ShoeMoney. Why is this surprising? After all, he invented the word and he owns the domain.
Someone
hears about Jeremy’s site from a friend or from a blog or from some
other source. They want to visit his site and they type it into Google.
He told me that he gets five times as much traffic from this search
term as any other on Google.
The power of this technique is that
with determination and patience, you will certainly win. It requires
inventing a trademark and then building a business or service or
organization around this trademark that people actually talk about. You
want to be able to say to someone, “just type ____ into Google.”
Obviously,
the only people who will do this have heard about you in some other
way. So this is an amplification and word of mouth strategy, not a blue
sky conversion play.
Here’s the math:
If you are lucky enough
to ‘win’ at traditional Yellow Pages SEO, you might convert a few
percentage points of the traffic you get into customers. On the other
hand, if you win at White Pages SEO, if you win because people talk
about your unique take and use your name, you convert just about
everyone. Think about that… if someone types Seth into Google,
they’re probably looking for me, and so when they arrive here, they
stay, because they found me. If, on the other hand, they type in Cow,
most of the people who end up here aren’t looking for my book, so they
leave.
David Meerman Scott owns the word ‘Meerman’. I have no
idea if he uses his middle name in real life, but it sure helps him
online. Scott Ginsberg owns the term ‘nametag scott’. You get the idea.
It’s like owning the perfect domain, via Google.
When you start
to win at the White Pages strategy, it turns out that this helps you
win at both. Your blog or site gets more organic traffic, which will
organically raise your Google results for other words and phrases.
Step by step:
1. Make an incredible product, offer a remarkable service.
2.
Associate a unique term or trademark with it. (Something that isn’t
generic, and preferably, not a crowded search term already).
3.
Assuming that you do #1 and #2, you’ll end up owning that word in the
search engines. If you don’t, revisit the first two steps.
The hard part, of course, is making something people choose to talk about. The good news is that this is under your control, which is better than the alternative.
(Image source: flashdaweb.com)
