bUmp Interactive

Building Relationships Between Web Content and Search Engines

I was recently contacted by a local businessman who asked me to teach him all about the magical world of SEO. After a few more messages back and forth the guts of his request finally came spilling out. He was asking “My website has been on the market for years, and it’s really good looking… Why won’t any search engines give me traffic”? This is where true SEO work shows its ugly underbelly. You see, SEO(to me) is a lot like building a relationship between your web content and your search engines. A search engine’s entire job is to bring its’ consumers “the one”. The website that answers their questions and catches their interest without being some sleezeball or cheat. To do that a search engine’s algorithm has to sift through every classic dating cliche known to us humans.

Most search engines start by easily spotting and weeding out most of those drug-addicts also known as link directories and spam sites that are just looking to get their next affiliate buck off the unaware consumer. Ker-plunk! That url gets crossed out of their little black book and blocked from calling again. Next they move to speed dating in the form of corporate blogs and black hat SEO tactics that get tons of traffic on their site before dropping you like last year’s prom dress. These guys are just buyin the dinner and drinks hopin the search engines put out on the first date! Along comes the classic “nice guy” that follows all the rules, and years down the road after tons of writing, link dropping, and general hopes and prayers and eventually they might get some traffic from the perfect search engine for them after all the others overlooked him. Search engines like this guy, but they’re not excited about him. They don’t bring him up in every conversation the consumer has or recommend them as a first option.

The lesson here is that you can’t treat your web project like that friday night date where you went out of your way to bring flowers and pick the expensive restaurant, only to get pissed off that they didn’t put out right away. Take time to find and spell out what your site is really about, using keywords, carefully chosen outbound links, and legitimate inbound links as well. Round your site out to be the image you REALLY want to sell of yourself on the web, then communicate that to the search engines by submitting your sitemap and links. Constantly seek to improve yourself and evolve with the relationship. If you screw up, fix it and move on. And don’t forget to flirt with multiple search engines… Sure, everyone wants the hot Google date, but msn and yahoo are great creative lovers! Relationships with positive results take time, communication, and consistent effort to build. But those are the most rewarding ones and the lifeblood of most internet entrepreneurs.