Out-Of-The-Box Thinking On SEO

I’ve taken Michael Martinez to task before on some things that he’s said, but I generally like reading his blog. He writes some of the most unique content about the topic of SEO that I can find and he usually takes a contrarian point of view, which I like a lot. But I often find that I agree with his macro points while disagreeing with his micro points. A recent blog post reminds me of why.

The blog post of which I speak outlines 20 SEO tips that ordinary every day web optimizers should have used. He calls them “hard core” tips. They are indeed hard core.

Here thy are in a rain bucket:

1. Redesign your website once or twice a year.
2. Change the titles on your least successful pages twice a year.
3. Stop using keywords in your URLs.
4. Stop using keywords in your titles.
5. Design a 5-10 page website about a community project or charitable activity.
6. Create a website without using targeted keywords in your copy and get each page to rank for at least two expressions.
7. Reverse the polarity of your website. If it’s mostly graphics, make it mostly text. If it’s mostly text, make it mostly graphics. If it’s mostly user-generated content, make it mostly your own unique, coherent, original content. If it’s not mostly UGC, make it mostly UGC.
8. Write an essay or tutorial on SEO. Do not discuss on-page factors, links, or social media.
9. Create a website with unscannable copy and get each page to rank for at least two expressions.
10. Pick an expression no one searches for. Within six months, generate at least 100 natural queries for that expression.
11. Take your most popular article and write a sequel to it every year.
12. Launch three blogs on their own domains. Don’t build any links for them. Don’t promote them in any way. Use a different blog application for each one.
13. Inspire five other sites to link to a press release without using a press release distribution service and without asking for links.
14. Pick a random homebody blog about any topic you have no interest in. Spend a month commenting on that blog site about every article. Write positive, supportive, in-depth comments.
15. Pick any one topic and write a 200-word sentence about that topic which makes sense and does not induce insomnia or dizziness. Do this for two more topics.
16. Watch any Sherlock Holmes movie.
17. Write a 500-word blog article. Next write 10 500-word articles about the same topic. Next write 30 500-word articles about the same topic. Now compare all 41 articles to each other. What is similar between them? What is different?
18. Watch any version of “101 Dalmations” and then go to your local dog walking park on a busy day and observe the people and the dogs for 30-60 minutes. Don’t interact, just observe. Then write a 500-word article explaining the differences and similarities between movies and reality.
19. Visit your local zoo. Take pictures of all the animals (even the reptiles in the glass cases). Try to avoid including any people in your pictures. Try to exclude any signs or other indications of the artificiality of the zoo environment. Go home and separate all the pictures into two groups: those that look like zoo pictures and those that look like pictures of animals in the wild.
20. Tie your shoe laces a different way every day for a week.

Thanks, Michael For Being So Brilliant

First, I’ve got to say that this is brilliant advice. From a writer’s perspective, it’s genius. I’ve been a writer of some capacity since I was 10 years old and I have to say that I’ve seldom run into such good advice even from some of the most professional writers I have come across in my extracurricular reading.

I write poetry, I write fiction, I write nonfiction. I’ve been a journalist and have won some pretty prestigious awards at it. I’ve written tons of essays. I am a magna cum laude graduate from the college I attended as a result of my extraordinary ability to write academic essays. I’m a published author. And all of this I accomplished before I ever started writing SEO content. In summary, I’ll say that I understand how to manipulate the English language through written communication pretty well. Michael’s advice is extraordinary advice if you want to learn to be a better writer.

But is it any good if you want to become a better SEO writer?

Again, I’d have to say “yes.” Anything that makes you a better writer can also make you a better SEO. So what’s the problem?

Admittedly, it’s a minor problem. Very small. Shouldn’t even be mentioned. But I’ll mention it anyway.

First, Let’s Talk About What’s Good

First things first.

There is much to be admired about Michael’s 20 talking points. They’re designed to get SEO content writers to thinking about their content rather than just blindly following the SEO advice meted out on the top SEO blogs, which are written by some very successful and very well respected search engine marketers (note, however, success doesn’t necessarily mean “right.”).

As a matter of course, I’m always in favor of anything that gets people to thinking. I think that’s much more important than following.

That said, what does watching a Sherlock Holmes movie have to do with SEO? Or with writing for that matter? The answer is, nothing. Which is what makes this suggestion so brilliant. Because sometimes, and I learned this by being a writer, the most important thing you can do for your creativity is take a break. Don’t like Sherlock Holmes? Watch something else. Just take a break.

Some of Michael’s advice is really quirky. Tie your shoelaces a different way every day for a week? Yes. Good idea. Why? Because it gets you to thinking about common, menial tasks in a different light. Don’t follow, think.

Break a window.

Doing something different is a good way to break out of a bad mold. It sparks creativity. It gets you to thinking. I sometimes have to remind myself of that and force myself to try a different routine. Just because.

But Why? Say Whaa?

Redesign your website twice a year. Who has time for that? Change your page titles. Why would anyone waste time on that?

I’ll tell you why. And I don’t do either of those (but I may start).

Redesigning your website will force you to criticize it and ask yourself why you did it that way in the first place. You don’t have to completely change everything. Keep what works. Throw out what doesn’t. But ask yourself some hard questions – like, “Do I really need that huge social media icon in the right corner?” Maybe it should be smaller. Maybe it should be in the header instead. Or the left sidebar. Ask yourself some questions. Think about it.

Change your page titles? Yes, of course. Clearly they’re not working. That’s why they’re the two least successful page titles. Make them work or fire them.

Brilliant.

So let’s talk about designing a website about a community project or charity. It’s not going to make you money. Why bother? Because doing something that doesn’t bring you a profit reminds you that you aren’t the most important person in the world. Your mother may think so, but others don’t. And you shouldn’t either.

Reverse polarity. I need to do this. I know I do. Some of my sites do well, some don’t. Anything that will make me a better online marketer is a good thing. Hard work? Yes. Necessary? To quote Sarah Palin: You betcha!

Write an essay? Huh? What?

Yes. Write an essay. When you write about something you learn it. It’s an old principle. Whatever you teach you become a master in. Teaching is the best way to learn. Write an essay that teaches people about SEO. You’ll learn about it in the process. You know how I learned about SEO? By writing about it on my client’s blogs.

OK, so am I making sense yet? I hope so because the next one is a doozie. Why would you write a website with unscannable copy? Because you need to learn how to create value. Plain and simple. Google’s search index is built around one key concept – value. They want their search results to be valuable to the end user. Period. If you create value in your content, then you’ll rank for that content. Period.

Pick an expression no one searches for and generate 100 natural queries for that expression. I’ve done that. Trust me, once you do it too, then you’ll know – really know – how to do SEO.

Then Michael tells you to write a sequel to your most popular article every year. Why do that? Obviously, because it’s popular. If a topic is popular, that means a lot of people are interested in it. That’s what you should be writing about. Check your traffic regularly, see what people are sharing with their friends, and write about your popular topics.

Launch three new blogs on their own domains. Try something new. It’s the best way to grow. Don’t worry about expense. It costs $10 to buy a domain name. If you’re worried about expenses when the cost of doing business is so low, then you are just too cheap. Maybe you shouldn’t be building websites.

How can you inspire other websites to link to a press release without asking for a link or submitting it through distribution websites? Write a blog post about it and link to it yourself. But first, make sure it’s a damn good press release.

I love this: Comment on a random homebody blog every day for 30 days. Why? Because it will teach you to think before you leave comments. A lot of people need to learn how to do that.

I could go on and on. Michael explains why you should perform each of these tips on his blog. I encourage you to read it. But before you do, let’s talk about that nagging little thing I mentioned earlier.

Your Keywords, Your URLs, Your Page Titles

Michael loves to tell people to quit doing things. But keep in mind that he’s usually talking to SEOs who learned their SEO by reading an e-book. He’s not really talking to small business owners who just want to get their websites to rank so their prospects can find them. Nevertheless, for the people he’s talking to, this is good advice. For everyone else, not so much.

I want to take a look at Michael’s reasoning behind telling his readers not to put keywords in their URLs or titles. I’ll quote his own words.

Stop using keywords in your URLs. – Because after all the years you have been reading SEO Theory, if you’re still chasing keywords, the odds are pretty good you got hit by Panda. If you didn’t get hit by Panda, ignore this tip.

Key phrase here: “If you didn’t get hit by Panda, ignore this tip.”

What’s Panda? Panda is the most talked about Google update in years. A lot of websites lost search engine rankings overnight because they were practicing rather insipid SEO techniques. They weren’t thinking. They were following.

Guess what. I put my keywords in my URLs and in my client’s URLs. None of us got hit by Panda. Know why? Because we use smart SEO techniques.

You don’t need your keyword in your URL fifteen times. You don’t need to target a keyword in your URL that isn’t relevant to the page you’re writing or the topic you’re writing on. And you don’t need to ensure that your keyword density is 5% for the keyword you have in your URL. As Michael says, quit chasing keywords! And I’ll add: Just write good content. Content that is valuable.

Here’s another one:

Stop using keywords in your titles. – Like the tip above, if you were NOT affected by Panda, ignore this tip. If you’re struggling to recover from Panda, this should be your number 1 cleanup job.

Number 1 cleanup job? Why would titles be a “number 1 cleanup job?” Because every SEO knows it’s the most important element on the page.

Or so they think they do.

Actually, that’s what top-tier SEOs are teaching. And they’re right. But writing a good SEO title is a lot like writing a good newspaper headline, something I have a lot of practice in. The keyword is not nearly as important as getting your reader to read your article. If you can do that using your keyword, do it. If you can’t, then do it without your keyword. The most important thing is to get your reader to read. Your keyword is secondary. And, by the way, it doesn’t even have to be an “exact match” keyword. You just need to write a compelling headline that gets your reader to read.

Create a Web site without using targeted keywords in your copy – If you have not yet been downgraded by Panda, ignore this tip. If you were Panda-slapped, stop blubbering and do this.

It can get quite comical in SEO and webmaster forums. All the web marketers out there screaming that Google’s not fair for downgrading their websites. Puh-lease. Webmasters should be thanking Google for even considering their website worthy of ranking – even if it’s on page 1,000 of the search results.

Understand this: Google doesn’t owe you anything. Google doesn’t owe me anything. Google exists to help people searching for information find it. Your job as webmaster, as website owner, is to provide answers to searchers’ questions. My job as an SEO content writer is to help you do that effectively.

SEO Isn’t Really All That Hard

In the six years that I’ve been involved in writing SEO content I’ve learned one very important thing – it’s not a lot different than writing anything else. The main thing is to write content that people want to read. If you can do that, keywords are just a little tool that you can use to keep your audience interested.

There’s no magic formula. No abracadabra. No genie in a magic bottle. It’s just you, your words, and your audience. Learn to write good content and the SEO pretty much takes care of itself.

Thanks Michael.

 

No related posts.