A couple of weeks ago I was at a coffee shop in East Vancouver meeting with a number of colleagues, when James, whom I had never met before, introduced himself. He mentioned that he worked in the public markets, which in Vancouver generally means a junior mining company, and was a friend of one of other people at the table.
It turns out James was tagging along to try a learn a little more about this whole ‘SEO thing’, and was taking an opportunity to network with some new people. After a little chit chat, James asked the question I get every time someone finds out that I specialize in SEO, “What is the secret to getting a #1 ranking on Google?”. My answer to this is always the same, and generally disappointing to the person asking, “If I knew that, I would be on my private jet on my way to Paris for dinner right now!”.
That being said, I generally always follow up with “SEO is about building a great website which ranks well in the search engine for a target market and generates increasing of search traffic as a result. The most important step in doing this is to have a website and brand that people trust, which a search engine optimization campaign can be built upon.”
Trust is King, Content is One of His/Her Subjects
This answer surprises most people but I will admit it is a bit of a cop out, because you are telling someone every thing they need to know and nothing all, at the same time. This is a far better answer than the generic ‘content is king’ hogwash. Let’s face it, great content is definitely a must for any website, but the vast majority of the content out there is more like than a court jester. And great content is something you find on a well designed website with integrity that can be trusted, because it takes time and effort to build great content.
The main reason that vast majority of people fail to accomplish their search engine optimization goals, is that they underestimate the level of effort required to build a decent website. Concepts such as link building are almost unthinkable, because it takes so much time, patience, persistence and focus to seek out link partners or build up content worthy of attracting inbound links. No one is going to link to an article, tool, photo, or video which looks unprofessional or is featured on a website which appears untrustworthy. It is simply logic, if your website is the cyber equivalent of a man in raincoat, standing at a street corner flogging stolen watches, it is not exactly going to inspire trust of any sort, in fact it will most likely leave a lasting negative impression.
When I link out to another website, I am endorsing the content, brand, and integrity on that website. I am telling my viewer or client, that there is something, somewhere else which I think is worthy of my endorsement. In a traditional business, that is time tested and true process, that happens to be one of the most powerful marketing methods known as the referral process. As most people who are looking into SEO services have already found out, getting quality traffic is not an easy task, so why would anyone refer or endorse another website which looks unprofessional or untrustworthy? The fact is that they don’t.
One of the first things to assess when looking to design a SEO program, is trust. Is the brand trustworthy? Does the website look professional, does it inspire trust? Are the people associated with the website or company trustworthy? Is the content accurate? Is the content well written? Does the website look like it was designed by a blind monkey? These are important things to ask in the process.
By focusing on trust, many elements of SEO become elementary. There are a numerous examples of websites that were built without the aid of a SEO professional, but focused on being a trusted source of information. Many of these websites have found tremendous success in Google and other search engines despite focusing their attention on typical SEO rules or recommendations. By focusing on trust as a cornerstone of your business, the task of optimizing the website to rank well in the SERP’s becomes infinitely easier. One of the key components of Vancouver SEO’s site audit is to evaluate the companies brand. If the website is the key public face of the company, then it is imperative that it be professional, accurate and link worthy. One fundamental truth online is that if you build great content, people will link to it. And a common denominator of great content, is one that can be trusted.
So if your website is full of questionable content, or if the design reeks of an incompetent amateur, it is to start thinking about trust. Give your website an honest look, and ask yourself if it inspires your trust. If you hesitate for even a second, then it is time to start looking into ways to fix the problem. And if your website is already a trusted source of information, you are one of the lucky few that is well ahead of the masses, who now need to start leveraging that trust to build some quality inbound links. This will be a topic of discussion in a future post.