SEO for Humans is Not About Google and “Content is King”
Spider, really your preferred audience? *
For years Google has been preaching building websites for humans not spiders. Nonetheless in reality Google still relies on website owners to make their pages spider-friendly.
To be honest I don’t like big Google and I don’t like spiders.
I like humans very much though. That’s why I will explain the SEO 2.0 way of SEO for humans not spiders in seven lessons:
Lesson one: Forget Google
Optimize as if no Google exists. Google optimization really cripples most websites. People have such a focused “fulfil Google’s wishes” mindset that they tend to overlook the people.
Optimizers tend to ignore those who actually use Google or the website they land on.
After opening your mind in this way you’ll quickly notice that in many cases you don’t need Google for “traffic” aka visitors.
My SEO 2.0 blog is proof of this concept in that I banned Google search altogether one fine day. You wouldn’t believe what happened next!
Lesson two: Look around
Identify the best traffic sources beyond Google for your niche. For blogs like mine (not only SEO blogs) the best traffic sources are often
- social networking sites
- niche communities
- other blogs.
I got the largest portion of my visitors from social media for years, even before blocking Google.
I get lots of very relevant visitors from niche social sites like Inbound.org and I get highly targeted visitors from my fellow bloggers.
My colleagues alias other bloggers send me highly focused visitors who don’t bounce off my blog but often view several pages.
Lesson three: Make people happy
In SEO 1.0 and SMO (Social Media Optimization) everybody was publishing linkbait and later clickbait.
In SEO 2.0 we rarely speak of bait as we do not treat people like fish but respect them as human being.
Build a community, a network of friends who recognize you all over the Internet and who support you by shares without asking for shares and trading votes.
In SEO 2.0 we’re not out there for the quick win, we’re in it for the long term bounty.
We make people happy by giving them what they want or what they even don’t know they want yet.
We provide solutions for problems they haven’t even recognized as such or thought of as solvable.
Unlike advertising we don’t brainwash them into liking it we guess what they might like. That’s why SEO 2.0 is always a step ahead and is never spammy by definition.
Lesson four: Go for marriage not the one night stand
SEO is like going a one night stand. You get someone to visit your site via a search engine and you want more of these one night stand visitors. SEO 2.0 is like marriage.
You are after faithful returning visitors and in the best case subscribers who stay with you for years.
These people trust you. They will buy and support you again and again. For instance I got one favorite online store where I buy my electronics regularly.
I got another one for books (NOT Amazon). I only use search to find out about the products and then I usually go back to my favorite places.
Lesson five: Practice basic SEO at the end
Can I dump SEO 1.0 altogether? No, you can’t. I try, but a commercial site can’t. You still need search traffic – especially from Google.
Yet there are myriads of other traffic sources by now. Social Media and search are intertwined now. Add the SEO 1.0 of tweaking
- titles
- headlines
- meta descriptions
- tags
at the end when you’re blogging. Come up with a gripping headline first!
Think about what valuable content you offer and then add some keywords when you’re done. Spiders may like “German SEO Blog for Small Business Berlin” but humans love “SEO 2.0”.
Lesson six: Content is NOT king
The ages old mantra of “content is king” is not true when it comes to SEO 2.0! It gets spread by corporate media moguls and subconscious monarchists .
In fact the term content already implies low quality and a top-down approach. Ask journalists whether they write content or whether they report news.
Ask novelists whether they create content or whether they write stories.
Ask artists and photographers whether they create content or not. In SEO 2.0 link is president. A president chosen by the people for the people.
Content that nobody understands besides a few experts is not president. Such content is just a local bureaucrat from Alaska. Content without links remains largely invisible to the public.
Lesson seven: People over spiders
Ever since social media went mainstream the people decide who’s hot and who’s not. Before only a few sites decided who to link.
Now everybody has the power to link what s/he likes. Be it on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest
people decide what’s popular, not spiders.
Socialize and do not only “target” people. Listen and learn to make people happy. Become part of
- groups
- networks
- communities.
In the best case not only virtual ones. Build relationships with real people online and in person.
SEO 2.0 is not just another hyped acronym for SEO or SMO. SEO 2.0 is a paradigm shift. It might be Digital Asset Optimization like Lee Odden coined it.
Yet it’s certainly not only about “content is king” and SEO for humans not spiders. That’s solely white hat SEO 1.0!
Last updated: April 18th, 2018.
* Creative Commons image by Holley And Chris Melton
Hey Tad,
Thanks for the mention. I like your analogy of marriage and a one night stand. It’s a constant challenge to take new visitors and get them into that marriage category.
V Good..
I am really Impressed ..
I am also get updated by some new stuffs…
Please keep it….
Thanks again
Steven: Did you know that visitors from your blog have the lowest bounce rate of all blog referers? They come by the dozens not the hundreds but as they often stay you matter more than let’s say DZone where I got popular yesterday with a bounce of horrible 95%!
Rajiv: Are you a bot?
Hey Tad, I really like #1. UnGoogling your internet marketing is probably the best way to thrive. Ironically, it also helps you do better on Google.
Thanks Tad, spiders are evil. I totally agree that most people spend too much time focussed on Google, and not enough on other sources like StumbledUpon.
I’m glad to see you write that Google is not God. This adds to the belief that human-powered Wikipedia entries are usually easier to find that algorithm-powered Google entries.
Ah, the marriage, the thing every blogger dreams of ever since he/she hits “publish” on his/her first post! I loved the elected president analogy the most. It’s really something I never thought about, the fact that king implies something enforced.
Your article seems to suggest that you are either writing for search engines or for your site’s visitors. I don’t think you have to make that choice. Good content can meet both your readers’ needs and the search engine spiders’.
Just look at the best-ranking websites in any category, and you’ll find plenty examples of user-friendly, spider-friendly copy. They do exist, and they probably make plenty of $$$ for their owners.
Tad, this is pretty underwhelming from you.
Points 1 and 7 are the same. Point 2 has been said repeatedly, likewise the rest of it.
The point about doing SEO at the end might encourage otherwise savvy folks not to integrate it into their design process from day one, since the post (moving past the sphinn title) addresses seo and not just content…
Meh, I’ve seen you do better. I say this as a friend, because I’d like to see you writing more higher quality, deeper thinking content than this.
Lee: Indeed, this might be the greatest irony of SEO by far.
Christopher: Yeah, but do not focus on other “sources” solely. Ideally you get visitors who return by themselves without the need of a “source”.
Ari: Yeah, the thanks God, thanks Google analogy comes up very often and indeed Google is <em>not</em> in spite of being omnipresent and all-knowing ;-)
Alina: Thanks! :-) In fact the king metaphor is sooo wrong in many respects that it’s time to substitute it with a more modern one.
Susan: It might seem so but I don’t say it -)
What I say is: Think about the user first and about keywords and stuff at the end of the writing process or you mess up your writing from the start. Also copy always sounds like low quality “content”. I rarely write website copy but I often write articles or essays :-)
Gab: Thanks for your honest feedback. Frankly I’m not too happy with the outcome of this post either. It wasn’t meant as a list from the beginning and it might be inconsistent due to this fact.
On the other hand you have to view the 7 lessons as steps. So you can’t make step 7 before step 1. Looking closely you’ll notice that #1 and #7 are different in fact.
#1 is about changing your mindset and stepping out of the Google-box.
#7 is about forging relationships online once you focus on real people not abstract “search traffic”.
[…] Google page rands, organic traffic and statistics are part of our everyday world. Of the spiders, Google is the first one on our minds. But to really take our blog or site to the next level, Tad Chef things we should forget about Google. And he’s right, SEO 2.0 should be about people, not spiders. […]
[…] SEO 2.0 | 7 SEO 2.0 Lessons: SEO for Humans Instead of Spiders is Not About Google and “Content is… (tags: seo google search searchengine) […]
This is great reading. Alot of ctrl+c and ctrl+v into my great-reading-file! :-)
Thanks mate!
Funny post about funny 2.0 or 3.0 etc.
Who said people know better ?? Who said USE GOOGLE ONLY. WHO said – WRITE FOR SPIDERS? Who has coded blog/socials engines? No connection from one social to another means no content? CONTENT IS NO KING? LOL
Did You write this blog engine?
Keep thinking till 5.0 or maybe P2PSEO.
Good post which I totally agree with. Staring blind at Google is no good. We should still build for visitors, not for Google!
Thanks for sharing!
To be honest I don’t agree that SEO is a one-night stand. Search engine optimization can be the spark of a nice relationship too. How many of us thought to have a one night stand … then eventually got married? :P
While this is rings true, how do you get the traffic in the first place who are going to Sphinn etc you without google. Going round leaving comments on other people’s blogs etc is a slow process – whereas optimising for google can bring many more visitors in the short term.
Good content can meet both your readers’ needs and the search engine spiders’.
If you can find a good site with good content, it can help too.
I agree, we should prioritize people over spiders. Good points bro!
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Interesting and thoughtful. Although, I’m not sure if step 6 is valid or just a semantic cul de sac?… and I definitely don’t like that nasty spider at the top!
Unfortunately people will always optimize for google. If you read forums, you will always find people asking stupid questions like “will google ban me if I link to that?” or “will I lose my rankings if I add alt to my images” and so on.
Although I like the idea of writing for people rather than spiders, the competition gets by with murder when it comes to Google. Some very spammy and duplicate content websites get top tier while the “people” websites get left behind.
I manage a small house painting website and some of the folks that get to first place are of the spammy variety. So, what’s the answer?
“So content that nobody gets besides a few scientists is not president.” Ah … I think it still is, if your target market are those few scientists, who between them will spent 17 million dollars of government grants on your new gizmo :-) Great post though for all the rest of it, couldn’t agree more!
I must admit I flip between embracing Google SEO strategies and not doing so. My most common approach now is to create a page without really catering to search engine stuff, and then before publishing it, seeing if I can tweak it without making it less attractive to readers while pleasing the spiders a little.
So, we have to design more user friendly website than search engine friendly. In SEO 2.0 off page activities more important to attract visitors.
Google trying to include people interaction in algorithm.
They use more user signals than ever, so that’s all is always about human relations.
Thanks for remind me this. Good article.