Just a Tool – Why SEO should not be used alone
People have long debated whether SEO is compatible with an informative site? In truth they need to work together and it is vital you don’t over complicate matters by making SEO too big a focus. The best traditional journalism sold newspapers. Those newspapers may have moved online but they are now amongst the world’s most popular internet sites. SEO of course plays a part in that, as does reputation established over years, but good quality content regularly upated drives people back to websites time and time again.
However, good you are at SEO you have to have great content, great stories and good writing before it is even worth employing SEO. An SEO driven site may bring in clicks but as a business you want repeat visitors. You want to build loyalty and encourage others to share your content. If it is not interesting they won’t do that and all your energy and budget spent on SEO will have been in vain.
Equally too, remember your site needs to look good. It doesn’t need to be a work of art but it needs not to jar the eye and it needs to be usable. A lot of SEO focus will be upon the naming convention for pages and articles within them, but of equal, if not more importance, is how those pages are navigated. SEO will help you drive traffic but it won’t have a great effect on how visitors use your page once they are there. Have a look at heatmaps and see where people are clicking. Look at research and see where people’s eyes track when looking at a website. All of these are relevant tools, as relevant a tool as SEO. Only in combination can you take your site to the top of the rankings.
Remember having a site people want to ‘buy’ into is the best sales tool you can ever have. Make what’s on your site, what people want to see and read and your SEO results will also rapidly improve.
Do you agree? We’d love to hear your thoughts, even if you disagree. Leave us your comments.
