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SEO Makes Websites Homogenous and Bland

Posted on 06. Jul, 2009 by admin in SEO

Rob Cot­ting­ham from Read­WriteWeb com­mented on a car­toon, Search Engine Pes­simized. He states, “It’s hap­pen­ing to more and more of the blogs I read: the per­son­al­ity, quirk­i­ness and unique voice that once made them so appeal­ing to me are fad­ing. In their place, an SEO-driven uni­for­mity that puts key­word place­ment ahead of pretty much everything.”

As an SEO con­sul­tant, I would have to agree with Rob. I’ve been work­ing with a few pub­lish­ers recently and what makes their head­lines so mag­ne­tiz­ing and hooks peo­ple into read­ing their arti­cles, are at risk of blandness.

A mes­sage that I have heard so often in the SEO indus­try, is that we are to opti­mize our web­sites not only for search engine spi­ders, but also for humans. Real peo­ple folks. Those that feel real emo­tions when they laugh, cry, shout or grum­ble when they read or watch some­thing that touches them.

The bal­ance between SEO and cre­ativ­ity is being lost. Being too far one sided with “key­word rich” con­tent will surely miss the point of what we are try­ing to achieve. In most cases, our goal is to gen­er­ate qual­i­fied traf­fic that con­verts into an action such as buy­ing a prod­uct, sub­scrib­ing to an email newslet­ter and even gen­er­at­ing repeat usage through brand engagement.

An audi­ence mem­ber or cus­tomer will only want to estab­lish a longer term rela­tion­ship with a brand should it be engag­ing and touch the core of what is rel­e­vant to them.

Unlike PPC, a tap that turns traf­fic on when you shovel money into the Google slot machine, the pur­pose of SEO is to gen­er­ate sus­tain­able busi­ness. Sus­tain­abil­ity for web­sites, whether it be a blog, a news­pa­per or ecom­merce site, is to ensure that when peo­ple arrive on those sites, they want to return again.

Can SEO and cre­ativ­ity go hand in hand?

Sure they can! SEO is both a sci­ence and an art. If SEO leans towards sci­ence too much, you will cer­tainly loose the sparkle that makes a piece of con­tent go viral. We want peo­ple to find our con­tent, click on it, enjoy it and spread it around the world to like-minded friends.

Get­ting our pages ranked within search engines is only the first part of the chal­lenge. On a search engine rank­ings page of 10 pos­si­ble list­ings a per­son could click on, I want them to click on my web­site or that of my client’s. Con­tent head­lines need to include both SEO and cre­ativ­ity. A well writ­ten, intrigu­ing head­line will cer­tainly get more clicks than one that is opti­mized purely from a robotic perspective.

Win­ning the click, is the sec­ond part of the chal­lenge. A quirky head­line that is also opti­mized for search engines, increases the chance of that list­ing being clicked. Key­word rich con­tent that is also highly engag­ing and thought pro­vok­ing, increases the chance of peo­ple blog­ging and link­ing back to that piece of con­tent. Nat­ural link build­ing, is the best form of inbound links and is an inte­gral aspect of SEO.

Even if there is a homoge­nous trend hap­pen­ing in the SEO indus­try, it needn’t be that way. SEO guys and gals need to step up with their cre­ativ­ity. I for one am not the most cre­ative or the best writer, how­ever, by engag­ing cre­atives who can make a piece of con­tent stand out amongst the rest, are cer­tainly worth their weight in gold.

SEOs and cre­atives make highly effec­tive teams, how­ever, bal­ance is the key.

Related Posts:

• Search Engine Opti­miza­tion Is The Most Com­mon Part Of An SEO Company
• The Seven Secret Skills Of SEO Work
• Search Engine Opti­miza­tion or SEO
• The Truth About SEO
• Does SEO Still Exist?

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