New Rules for Search Engine Optimisation

You can commission SEO audits and do all the optimisation you want, you can hire consultants and hold meetings and use fancy lingo, you can obsess about keywords and worry about Google tweaking their algorithm – but if you don't write for your customers, you are wasting time and money.

The rules of the SEO game have changed, because Google wants you to care about your customers.

Here are the new rules for SEO:

1. Use plain-spoken language. Both humans and Google must understand what you're on about. This is not easy, but it is simple: don't use the language of marketing, because marketing-speak does not ring true and people pick up on that. Use words that your customers use themselves.

2. Be uniquely helpful. Your words, pictures and videos must be beautiful, yes, but they must also be useful. People that come to your website have questions and they are hunting for solutions to their problems; if you provide them with answers, they will become your customers. If you don't know what those questions are, go and talk to your customers, and to their customers. Do this regularly. Remember, Google is all for unique content.

3. Encourage sharing. Make it an absolute joy to share your web pages on social media. Did you know that that you can tell Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter which title, image and description to use when people share a page with their friends and peers? This is done with metadata, which Google and the social media networks use when they digest your content. (For them, metadata is not optional.) Once your content team discover the power of metadata and how much fun they can have with it, they will do amazing marketing with it. And Google will reward you with more visitors.

4. Get the mechanics right. This means the people doing the publishing must have an easy job. They want to enter text that use customer language, add big and beautiful images, and write clever metadata, without battling the website's content management system. To achieve this, you may need your developer to add some functionality to your website’s admin area, or in some cases, upgrade it to use a modern and capable web content management system.

These rules need each other. This is not a menu from which we can pick the ones we like. Please use all four, in conjunction.

So, in a nutshell:

1. Talk to your customers and use their sort of language.
2. Create useful content.
3. Help your content team to make your website popular on social media.
4. Support your content team with a modern, well-configured system.

Your customers will love you for it. Google will be right into it too, and will bring more customers to your website. And – dare I say it? – you can reduce the budget for external SEO agencies, but that is another story.

Let me know how you get on.