SEO and content marketing - finding the balance

Abby, the membership manager at Brighton Chamber went to brightonSEO last week. In amongst the buzzphrases (Content is King...SEO is dead) and winning the Fresh Egg omelette challange, she picked up some tips on the value of owned/earned media and optimising search.

The most important aspect of Search Engine Optimisation is making your website easy for both users and search engine robots to understand. SEO helps the engines figure out what each page is about, and how it may be useful for users.

In regards to searches, Google’s aim is to make the web a better place for users. It does this by rewarding people who do things right. Hence the animal themed algorithm updates that you will probably have heard of.

Occasionally it does seem that Google is trying to distance itself from SEO and cosy up to the latest trend, content marketing. The introduction of Penguin (which removes link authority from spam sites), Hummingbird (a new conversational search) and Panda (which penalises over-optimised and over ad-sensed sites) means that SEO now requires much more consideration.

Understandably, this does leave some marketers feeling nervous. But in my opinion, these are our animal friends as they ultimately ensure users receive better content.

This doesn't mean the death of SEO, it simply means a bit of rethinking.

It is possible for SEO and Content Marketing to form a collaborative relationship where content is optimised as well as enjoyable to read.

Ben Potter from Econsultancy and Leapfrogg wrote an interesting article on this very subject. In fact, he suggested that the term SEO needed a little tweak to accommodate its new identity. He suggested a subtle change to the E in SEO. It’s the people who have the buying power, not the search engines. Although the original article was published back in 2012 it still very much applies.

So... without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to Search Experience Optimisation.

Search experience optimisation tries to improve the experience of users that are searching for something that you can provide. Information and results are presented in a way that attracts them to your brand or simply to your website.

Rather than purely focusing on ranking, we need to approach SEO with the mind-set of making sure the search experience is pleasant and enjoyable for our customers. It’s time to nurture those relationships.

Search experience optimisation is:

• Creating good content that your visitors like
• Being relevant and easy to find
• Reacting to your analytics and responding when people land on your page.
• Presenting information to create an organic user journey
• Earned and owned media

Search experience optimisation is not:

• Buying links from irrelevant sites
• Creating keyword stuffed unreadable pages with no content value
• Adding meta keywords (how do meta keywords improve anyone’s search experience?)

Organic search is at it's highest and it is our responsibility to build great experiences for our users.

If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk