Johnny Seo: Why is this man in my Google?
For at least 20 years, webmasters have been engaged in search engine optimization, or SEO. There's a system for everything — Google's engineers call theirs an algorithm — and to get our work recognized we must learn how search engines find and rank pages.
This process seems like the punishment of Sisyphus: Not to be gamed, Google keeps its process in flux, making any victory fleeting. Just the same, if there's a way to game the system, it will be found. It takes both engineers and marketers to maintain stasis. This makes all the rules around SEO subject to debate. The marketer's first rule of SEO is: You talk endlessly about SEO.
With no shortage of opinion, the facts about this generation of search seems as mystifying as ever. Typing "seo" into the Google search bar brings me a range of results, including the bio of Johnny Seo, K-pop boy band heartthrob. Yet if I type "seo as a noun" I'll retrieve detailed definitions of SEO and arguments for the acronym's use as noun, adjective or verb.
The endless search for knowledge about search has made me shy from work as a full-time SEO. Yet from my experience as a writer and developer, I've formed 3 basic SEO rules.
1. The rules of SEO always change.
Every spring, Google drops hints about how it makes the secret sauce. Developers pay $1,150 to attend the annual Google I/O conference in California. Invariably, they hear that Google has something new up its sleeve.
This year's presentation is no exception. Google announced that image recognition software will be deployed on phones. In a demonstration, Google engineers figuratively flexed their muscles to show 360-degree views in search results.
Depending on your viewpoint, Google's improvements break the rules for getting on the first page of search results, or just create new rules. Not long ago, Google ranked video highly, and and employers looked for Final Cut Pro prowess from their web producers. With a shift to computer-aided drafting, there's one new medium for the new media producer to master. Or maybe Google is offering architects a new way to be underemployed.
Big photos, podcast links, social media posts, timelines and even fact checks also will get their due, the presenters promised. Google I/O is a developer event, so they quickly dove into the weeds of coding semantics and page-load QA. Eventually marketers will seize on any factor that proves its influence on page ranking. If social chatter gets prominent display in search, websites soon will double down on ways to carry on a conversation online. Who knows what will happen once Google reads the comments.
2. Know the rules of SEO, and how to break them.
A colleague insists that the winning search strategy is to repeat keywords or phrases three times in the text. There's a backstory to this rule: Websites used to repeat words in the first few sentences of an article to establish the subject for its most important reader, the Googlebot. It didn't make for great prose. When writing about search engine optimization, it is important to keep search engine optimization in perspective, so that search engine optimization is not an end in itself. That sort of thing.
The Googlebot was very literal, but not so feeble-minded. In Search Engine Journal, consultant Kristine Schachinger points out that keyword stuffing indeed was a thing, until search smartened up. Now it's better at rewarding content that humans want to read. "In fact," she writes, "you can find results now where the keyword does not exist in the visible portion of the page." Links on the page can be just as important.
Yet repetition rules among SEOs. Repetition works. A 15-year-old keyword density analyzer still will help write a resume that gets past screening software, or a blog post that gets past the marketing department. The HR and marketing departments still may be scoring by word count, even if Google isn't. Holding to a strict key phrase count is fine, then, as long as your goal is to score points with a computer.
What counts for an customer or hiring manager is to use redundancy is a memory aid. Repetition helps wire your brain to recall facts. Research indicates that spaced repetition over time is more effective than just chanting an opening phrase. So follow the rules, but only if they lead the reader to understanding.
3. The Googlebot doesn't know all. But it's learning.
Google would like to get to know you. Marketing technologist Kevin Rowe says search engines use keywords in context to produce more relevant results. Rarely do I have to type "Chicago" as a search term to get local information. I also search for music a lot. Chicago-born pop idols like Johnny Seo may not be quite as random a search result as one would imagine.
Google already knows the zeitgeist. It says it handles trillions of searches a year, and that leads Google to reflect back to us what we're already asking. This weekend, with BTS selling out Soldier Field, boy bands are in the air, and in Google Trends.
Now artificial intelligence is taking on added weight in Google search. If a particular phrase is new to Google, a machine learning algorithm called RankBrain will try to deduce what it means. That's one reason keywords are not as key: Google discovers different ways to say the same thing.
The mysteries of search are both sorrowful and luminous. When search doesn't work, it's frustrating for user and creator. When productive, a search teaches you things you never thought to learn, and that's reason enough to keep searching. 🦄
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