No Surprises in SEO

When we create a proposal for a website, we often include analysis of competitors’ websites. Today, Rosie asked me for my take on the top ranked sites for a specific keyword phrase a potential client had asked about. Since I have never done a search for this phrase before, I just hopped on Google and pulled up the top three sites they offered me.

• The first was a long established company with a website containing lots of good original content using words people normally type into search boxes when they’re looking for this type of service. They had a Flash header, which they should probably update, but they also had plenty of content below and around the header, as well as correctly-done meta tags under the hood.
• The second was a newer company with a website containing lots of good original content using words people normally type into search boxes when they’re looking for this type of service. They had a header accessible to search engines and a recently-updated blog.
• The third was a relatively young company with a website containing lots of good original content using words people normally type into search boxes when they’re looking for this type of service. Theirs is a WordPress site, as it happens, with multimedia and SEO plugins.

The three sites had different color schemes and different kinds of pictures, from staid to playful, but search engines don’t actually care about that. They care about — obviously — lots of good original content using words people normally type into search boxes when they’re looking for this type of service.

SEO continues to be a matter of communicating well with search engines. There are factors we can’t control, such as the age of a domain and the real-world stature of a company. But a site with plenty of good, optimized content will do better than other websites. No surprises.

Sometimes it’s a big surprise to the physical-world competitors: how can that new company zoom ahead of them online when they’re clearly a more established firm? That’s not an unfair advantage, though. There’s no reason for established firms to rest on their laurels and relax about their poor quality websites, allowing some whippersnappers to rank ahead of them.

Give your web visitors a great online experience. Communicate well with search engines. And then don’t be surprised when you show up better for search than the others.