Minimalist SEO

SEO & Search Intent is Like Getting Dressed in the Morning

Transcript

Today I want to talk to you about how SEO is like getting dressed.

So now my sound a little bit strange, but let me explain what I mean by that. So when you wake up in the morning or whatever point of the day, you decided to get dressed, you stand in front of your dresser, your closet, or whatever, wherever your clothes are. If it’s a pile on the floor, that’s fine too. If it’s a look, you know, the laundry basket, whatever it is, and you look at it all and you say, okay, what am I going to wear today?

And oftentimes you don’t just pick the very first thing that kind of pops up.You think to yourself,

  • what am I doing today?
  • What is the weather going to be like?
  • Who am I hanging out with?

 

All these kinds of things you go through to try to figure out what you’re going to wear.

  • Are you going to be in a professional setting?
  • Should you wear that button up shirt?
  • Or are you going to be doing some live videos representing your agency?

And are you going to be wearing a Goonies? T-shirt like, you know, sometimes you make wrong choices, right?

So you’ve got to think about these types of things. And that’s the exact same thing with SEO.

The fact is if you go out wearing the incorrect clothing, you’re either going to be viewed as inappropriate, or you’re not going to be comfortable.

I mean, if you’re going to go say on a, you know, a big hike and you’re wearing just like very heavy boots and a sweater in the middle of the summer, that’s not going to be good or healthy for you.

SEO is the same thing.

Let me explain.

Let’s say you did a Google search 20 years ago, you would get probably three ads and 10 organic search results that link to websites.

You don’t get that anymore.

Whenever you do a search in Google, you get a variety of results:

  • Local listings with a map and a list of businesses.
  • Answers to common questions related to the search
  • Feature snippets with a direct answer to your query.
  • Sometimes you get a ton of ads.
  • Knowledge Panel with author or business information.
  • Social results: Twitter content, Youtube videos

There’s a lot of things that can show up in the search results.

So when you’re planning to create a piece of content that serves a purpose that helps your customer, your avatar, the person who typically is going to come to your site, you need to think to yourself:

How am I best going to serve that person?

And how does Google feel that that person is best served?

So what I would suggest that you do is do the equivalent of looking into your closet before you actually do any kind of content creation.

When you have a keyword in mind that you want to write about, first off search it within Google. Find out what search results are being shown.

If you find that videos are being shown well, don’t create a blog post, create a video and post it on YouTube.

Let’s say that you have a question-based keyword and you see a bunch of FAQs appearing in the search results.

We’ll make sure that the content you are creating is FAQ style. So you have an opportunity to show up in those those little featured snippet areas.

You want to make sure that you know, what the search landscape is before you start creating content. Before you start solving the problem, make sure that you know exactly what type of content is going to be shown before you  jump in there.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail, right?

If you’re a blogger and the only kind of tool in your tool box is creating blog posts. You’re just going to keep creating blog posts.

If your a videographer and you’re doing everything through YouTube, well, guess what? You’re just going to be making videos about everything.

You’re not necessarily going to be able to capture everything in the search engine.

So, so please, please, please plan ahead – Dress appropriately.

If you dress inappropriately for your content, you’re not going to be seen. You’re not going to stand out. Nobody’s going to find your content.

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