SEO Success: Forget Google and Think Order of Operations

No matter how many ways we Internet dweebs try to explain the dynamics of online marketing—whether it’s to clients, with articles, in forums or “for Dummies”—fiction continues to overwhelm fact as entrepreneurs lust for rankings, rankings, rankings. And to be honest, I’m getting a little frustrated. This whole putting the cart before the horse thing is a quick buck for tactless SEOs and a lost cause for the business owners who keep buying into it.

Rankings only matter insofar as they produce conversions. And conversions can only happen if a number of onsite variables have been adequately attended to, perhaps the two most important being usability and content. Good copywriting tightens up the whole package to ensure visitors hook into the value of your offerings.

Then again, this is 2007. Who has the time or money to pay for substance in an era when Paris Hilton would probably be President if teenagers could vote?

I digress.

Then there is the keyword debacle. By no fault of their own, entrepreneurs continue to believe that duct taping their website with a smattering of woefully generic keywords will skyrocket them to Google stardom. I say “by no fault of their own” because there are, to my estimation, approximately 17,321 of the aforementioned tactless search engine optimizers selling this kind of hogwash as Internet gospel. I don’t meet these types often mind you, but they must be out there—because I refuse to believe business owners could come up with such trifle left to their own devices.

Or could they?

I guess nobody is perfect. Every entrepreneur—myself included—has at one time or another bought into the economic mythologies of the world wide web in all its misunderstood glory. We all want to be Number One, even if it’s just in the Google search results. It makes us feel good, at least until we realize we can’t pay to keep the lights on.

If you want your online business to garner returns before you get too jaded to care, do it right the first time. Cleaning up the mess later is expensive. (I know because I get paid to clean up messes often.) A recommended SEO “Order of Operations” then, might look like this:

1. Know your purpose and define your goals relative to your online business.
2. Understand what motivates your audience to buy. Think psychographics, not demographics.
3. Develop content (read: answers and information) that matters to your market.
4. Arrange that content into an intuitive hierarchy of pages and sub pages.
5. Design your website around all of the above, considering your user first, search engines second.
6. If you are confident you have executed (1) through (5) with meticulous attention to detail, you are finally ready to optimize the hell out of your website.

Execution really is everything, online or off. But it’s the orderliness of that execution that can make or break your budget and, ultimately, your business.

Karri Flatla is a business graduate of the University of Lethbridge and principal of snap! virtual associates inc., a consulting firm providing Internet marketing services to the progressive entrepreneur. Karri also produces Outsmart, the newsletter for small business with big purpose. Visit http://www.snap-va.com/newsletter to subscribe and get your free Copywriting & Usability Checklist now.

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