All over the world there is a war being waged few people know about. Every day, teams of search engine mercenaries work to break through Google’s army of page rank robots. Their goal: to put their clients’ businesses at the top of your search results.
It’s called SEO, or Search Engine Optimization – it’s the process that allows businesses to work their way up the search ranks. Google, Yahoo!, Bing and other search engines use proprietary techniques to rank every site on the internet, meaning some websites end up on page one of your search results while others end up on page thirteen. And as older forms of reaching consumers become less effective, SEO is the future of the marketing in the digital age, presenting new opportunities and problems.
The idea behind SEO as a business tool is simple: pay someone to move your company up in search rankings, making it more visible. Determining a site’s page rank involves analyzing everything on the internet and giving it a place in relation to everything else. Page rank robots – also known as ‘spiders’ – scour the web, assigning a value to every page based on the amount of original content it finds, the frequency it is updated, the amount of views it receives and the number of other web pages that link to it. When a company hires an SEO service, they are essentially hiring someone to create the content and inbound links necessary to improve a ranking.
It sounds a little sneaky – and although SEO is occasionally underhanded, it isn’t always. Take Toronto’s Rob Campbell, who runs Smojoe, a “one man social for search” SEO shop. Campbell is an expert in creating web experiences that leverage how search engines operate. For eample, take his photo contest website, Lenzr – it is both a legitimate photo website and an engine for his SEO clients. Every photo contest on Lenzr has a different client and “sponsor” company with keywords attached to them. Enthusiastic amateur photographers upload photos for a competition judged by actual third-party judges in the photo community.
The SEO trick comes from the community’s very real passion: competitors must share their pictures on social channels, using Lenzr’s keyword-heavy links, to gain entry to the top 10. Once the links are shared, the SEO work is complete as clients and keywords have accumulated the search clout to drive them up the ranks. Lenzr’s innovation is leveraging organic social activity online to produce what Campbell calls “keyword sandwiches for robots.”
Nowhere on Lenzr does it say anything about SEO and Campbell doesn’t see that as a problem. “I don’t want people to think it’s about SEO or diminish the community’s passion,” says Campbell. “I’m fooling Google by doing exactly what they want. [Smojoe] make[s] really good destinations.”
Yet veiled contests and dual-purpose content inevitably questions the authenticity and ethics of SEO. If websites are being created solely to build powerful links, then what does authenticity look like on the web? SEO tacticians often strike deals with popular bloggers, for example, buying a juicy mention – and link – in posts. If bloggers, the new breed of citizen journalists, offer content and mentions for pay, what kind of transparency should readers expect of them? These are some of the larger cultural – and to a certain extent, philosophical – issues raised by search engine optimization.
The waters are further muddied by the common practice of SEO spamming. If you’ve ever seen an innocuous blog comment from “Rustproofing Montreal,” it’s likely that the same comment has been posted by a spambot on hundreds of other blogs to boost a company’s searchability. This kind of “black ops” SEO diminishes the ethical standards and credibility many SEO shops try to maintain.
It’s also something Dev Basu, occasional lecturer on marketing at the University of Toronto and operator of Powered by Search, tries to counteract. His company’s approach is the total opposite of “black hat” spam, opting for a ground-up model that continually builds interesting, unique content for clients.
Basu teaches clients that SEO starts with their website, saying that “Great SEO involves a few key building blocks, including great content, a superb user experience, and a search-engine-friendly website architecture.” Basu maintains that the search game is ultimately an opportunity to create fulsome inbound marketing programs that continually produce content that connects with a business’ core audience. For Basu, SEO is about getting involved with the right audiences in the right places, and creating the kind of information that adds value to online communities.
The growing move towards social search – in which consumers turn to personal social networks rather than seach engines – points to the next stage in SEO’s evolution. Companies like Smojoe and Powered by Search will have to continually update their tactics to accommodate a socialized search experience. Producing content and ensuring consumers connect with that content will be a growing priority.
As market presence is increasingly defined as online presence, companies offering the most advanced products and services may find themselves anachronistic if they don’t embrace SEO as a means of salvation.
In a digital age, the dilemma facing more and more companies is this: if a business operates without an online presence, does it really exist?
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Kiel Hume writes about technology for Toronto Standard. Follow him on Twitter at @kielculture.
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