I’ve heard that for a plane to crash, 7 consecutive errors need to happen. Conversely, this means that it is rare that a plane crashes from the result of just one error.
So how on earth do you compare a plane crash to SEO you might ask. I’m glad you did.
For content to succeed, it needs a series of things done right. Rarely can it benefit from just one thing done well. Understanding how they each play together; some very small roles and some larger ones, is important.
Here are two things to do right in order to do well with your SEO efforts.
Firstly. Content Isn’t King.
Yes. Content isn’t king. Great content is king. You see that everywhere. Shows get cancelled all the time. They were content. Just not a great fit for the masses. Or they failed for a number of reasons. Same with written content, or video, or audio. I wrote a short blog on creating great content.
- More than 2 million blogs are published EACH day.
- 576,000 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube EACH day
- In March of 2018, Apple Podcasts surpassed an all-time 50 billion downloads.
There is a plethora of content. Take your topic and you’d find that there’s a plethora of information on your topic as well. It’s all numbers. You have to differentiate. Great content is king.
I tell my kids this; The world has plenty of acceptable. What the world needs is exceptional.
Are you creating acceptable or exceptional content?
Meta Title and Description Tags ARE Important to SEO
If you’ve heard or read that they aren’t as important for SEO, I disagree. I believe they are vital to SEO.
I take a big picture overview on SEO. So if anything helps; directly or indirectly, I call it SEO. Isn’t that the goal after all? So yes, meta titles aren’t that high on the list for being found. But, they play a HUGE role in CTR.
Story time. I was walking the streets of a touristy little town lined with restaurants. Some restaurants had their menus posted outside while some had a friendly staff member greet passers and sell their menu. Some were passive, some aggressive. You could think of these as all the results on the page. Your content is greeting the perusers. How are you going to convince them to come in. The Meta title and description, of course.
This is where the cycle kicks in. Congrats! You’ve convinced a passerby to enter your restaurant by selling them an exceptional menu. If they notice the bad decor (UX/Design), or the food (content) isn’t as promised. I doubt they’d return. Conversely, if everything was as promised, or even way better. You are at the start of a long relationship. So SEO meta titles and descriptions ARE important for SEO.
Example Time: Bare Metal vs Hypervisor
I worked on a blog with a team on this topic and it did okay. The meta title was “Bare Metal vs. Hypervisor“. It showed up on the first page and got decent CTR. Acceptable.
With a little digging, I found that the reason people searched for this was that there was a genuine need for this distinction to be clearly explained. What they read wasn’t satisfying their question. So I changed the Meta title. I added the word “Explained!”, making it “Bare Metal Vs Hypersor Explained!”. This was a HUGE promise and a deciding factor. The CTR soared. It ended up landing a featured snippet position and #1. The estimated value for this blog rose to about $20k a month, and compounding. Exceptional.
Tell me why meta titles play a minor role in SEO, again?
URLs ARE important to SEO.
Same applies for URLs. It is part of the visible content on the SERP. People are so picky. One word could be the deciding factor on why people click a result. Pay attention to your own choices. So yes, while the URL of a page isn’t important to the very specific problem of showing up on the SERP, it plays its part in helping the user decide whether to click on the result or not.
If the meta title and description is like the hotel staff interacting with the tourists strolling by, the URL could then be his shoes. When you glance down and he’s wearing flip flops but talking about a fine-dining experience. Well, it has cast doubt in my mind already. Every feature in the SERP should build trust, build a promise. Remove friction. Remove confusion. Diffuse those landmines. Some say URLs play a minor role in SEO, but my preference is to upgrade its importance.
So – while things might play a minor role, they can have huge impact. We learned this when we were introduced to the fulcrum in 4th grade physics. I get it, it’s just perspective and semantics.
Look at your tactics as a package. Spend time on crafting as much as you can. Successful content is built from a lot of things done right. SEO is a combination of multiple tiny tasks. Some play a long-game. Some might not seem worth the time, but they are vital.
“Quick wins” are great to focus on but get to those slow cooking tactics. Ones that will compound over time.
This is what I obsess over. If you’d like me to obsess over your SEO and content strategy, let me know. I’d love to be your pilot. Could not resist the cheesy closing line.