I’ve been an SEO for so many years I stopped count­ing a long while back, but the last thing I want to write is a his­to­ry of SEO post. What I do want to think about is what it means to opti­mize, what we are opti­miz­ing, and who we are opti­miz­ing for.

Opti­mize is such a great word. Who would not want to be opti­mal and have opti­mal mar­ket­ing and opti­mal web­sites? The real­i­ty is, opti­mal might be an impos­si­ble objec­tive. We can prob­a­bly get very close though. Let’s have a dic­tio­nary moment.

optimize

verb

• make the best or most effec­tive use of (a sit­u­a­tion or resource). “we man­age our time so that we opti­mize our pro­duc­tiv­i­ty”

I always think def­i­n­i­tions are impor­tant. They con­strain what things are and, more impor­tant­ly, what they are not. So it looks like as a pro­fes­sion, SEO might be about:

Optimal Content

One of the ques­tions I like to ask at the moment is “who has opti­mal con­tent?” The more mar­kets I ana­lyze, the more I see that the win­ners have more and bet­ter con­tent than the oth­er com­peti­tors in their mar­ket. In oth­er words, most web­sites have sub­op­ti­mal con­tent. This is not a post of answers to ques­tions such as “how do you cre­ate an opti­mal con­tent strat­e­gy for a mar­ket?” It’s a post designed to see whether the ques­tions I ask myself will res­onate with you. Are these the right ques­tions to help us opti­mize for search engines? What oth­er ques­tions should we be ask­ing? “What is the opti­mal amount of con­tent to have in your mar­ket?” When think­ing about the answer I can tell you that the only place to start is with the con­sumer. The peo­ple doing those 3 bil­lion search­es a day. Those peo­ple are your cus­tomers and they want to find your web­site to gain knowl­edge, make lists, com­pare options and fea­tures, find the best price, and more. They want to use a full-stack of devices to access your con­tent and might want to move from your app to your web­site seam­less­ly. And, most impor­tant­ly, those peo­ple have giv­en you clues about every­thing they want to read in the key­words they typed in, and whether you see a list of key­words or deep insights into your con­sumer will often be the dif­fer­ence between a good and great con­tent strat­e­gy. Opti­mal and sub­op­ti­mal. Because we’re play­ing most­ly in Google play­ground we’ve got to play by Google’s rules. Google has giv­en us all some pret­ty big clues in their Qual­i­ty Guide­lines. But don’t expect any sur­pris­es in this chunky doc­u­ment.

Optimal Websites

Con­tent is more vis­i­ble on web­sites that have been opti­mized for search engines, devices, and con­sumers. This means that SEO is a fusion of tech­ni­cal and archi­tec­tur­al skills, direct­ed by a desire to help the con­sumer find the “great con­tent” that has been craft­ed for them. Could your web­site:

• Be bet­ter opti­mized?
• Have bet­ter infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture?
• Load faster?
• Offer a bet­ter mul­ti-device expe­ri­ence?
• Have few­er crawl issues?
• Have bet­ter markup?

With­out good answers, your web­site is sub­op­ti­mal and traf­fic will suf­fer.

Optimal Links, Mentions, Shares

This is impor­tant. Not because it’s part of the rank­ing algo­rithm, but because it’s a good mea­sure of web­site and busi­ness health. Great brands with great prod­ucts and con­tent that are engag­ing with their var­i­ous stake­hold­er audi­ences (cus­tomers, jour­nal­ists, and blog­gers) should get men­tions, links, and shares. Get­ting this in an opti­mal way means answer­ing the big ques­tion: Why? Why would these audi­ences men­tion, link to, and share what you’d like them to? It also means engag­ing. If you don’t make the calls, you don’t make the sales. Are you hav­ing an opti­mal num­ber of con­ver­sa­tions?

Optimal Resources

Then, of course, you’ve got the idea of opti­miz­ing resources. What still amazes me is how under­in­vest­ed organ­ic search is as a chan­nel when com­pared to oth­er avail­able marketing/media chan­nels. An oppor­tu­ni­ty missed or plain insan­i­ty? How about both! It turns out that most com­pa­nies are exe­cut­ing a sub­op­ti­mal SEO strat­e­gy with sub­op­ti­mal resources and won­der­ing con­stant­ly why they aren’t win­ning their mar­ket or even mov­ing in the right direc­tion. When were you ever asked, what is the opti­mal amount of resource need­ed to achieve busi­ness objec­tives and if you had more resources, what could be achieved? Opti­mal will depend on your cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, mar­ket, oppor­tu­ni­ty, and ambi­tion. Your resource shop­ping list will include peo­ple with spe­cif­ic knowl­edge and skills, tech­nol­o­gy, and data. It might also include orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture, team­work, and part­ners like agen­cies.

Optimal Behavior

The final area of opti­miza­tion that makes all the dif­fer­ence is one of atti­tude and behav­ior. A can-do, sleeves rolled up, hard-work­ing atti­tude matched with action can achieve amaz­ing things. There’s no mag­ic but­ton that makes SEO hap­pen. At least I haven’t found one. There is the abil­i­ty to plan well, work hard, and get the rewards.