Let’s start as we mean to go on, and explode the biggest web business myth.
The world is trying to convince you that Search Engine Optimization is vital to the success of your website.
It is not.
And I’ll prove it.
You’ve all seen the websites, books, and presentations that tell you how to start a web business:
- Brainstorm ideas
- Do keyword research
- Select best KEI
- Build content around keywords ensuring that keywords are prominent:
- In the domain name
- In the file name (URL)
- On the page
- In the title
- In meta description
- In meta keywords
- In heading tags
- In bold tags
- In links to other pages
- In incoming links
It is all rubbish.
OK, you can help yourself by including the above in your plans (except KEI, which is worse than useless – it can harm your web business), but that should never be your first focus. You are not going into business to be a search engine specialist – you are providing goods or a service.
Your first focus has to be your purpose. Your own purpose first, then the purpose of your web business, then the purpose of each page you write, and each link you forge.
Do you want the proof?
Why SEO Is Futile
This site is about creating an online business. The prime focus, as you can see from my purpose, is web business. It’s a big topic with a lot of sites – Google reckons around 405,000,000 pages available with over 500,000 searches a month. I will not waste my time discussing KEI. Lets look at some of the other gold standards of SEO in the light of the page that ranks 1 in all those millions.
Web business:
- Is not part of the domain name
- Is not in the file name (models.html)
- Does not appear anywhere on the page!
- Is split and reversed in the title (Business Models on the Web | Professor Michael Rappa)
- Is not in the meta description (Welcome to Managing the Digital Enterprise®, an open educational site that surveys the many opportunities and challenges managers face in an increasingly digital world.)
- Is not included in the meta keywords, except split as parts of other keywords (e-commerce, electronic commerce, e-business, electronic business, web analytics, business models, digital automata, auctions, dynamic pricing, channel conflict, trust, computer security, internet privacy, intellectual property, internet governance, web ethics, open courseware)
- Cannot be in headings, bold or links as it is never mentioned
- Does not appear in the first 65 of the links into the page.
So how can it be number 1 for web business, when it doesn’t even mention it?
Because the page is totally focused on explaining to it’s visitors what a web business is, with a comprehensive analysis of the forms it can take. It is authoritative and thus gains well over a thousand links in.
You can learn how to do that, and how to use SEO without it using you. You just need to have a clear purpose.
Tags: seo