Easy Search Engine Optimization Anyone Can Do

It’s hard to write an article like this without talking about the need for SEO industry standards or pointing out the immense competition among SEO consultants, agencies, tool providers, and (e)book authors for your business dollars.  So I will begin this article with a paragraph about standards.  Given that our industry has no standards every expert who publishes SEO advice is suspect.  The lack of standards makes it impossible for people to independently verify the claims that various pundits make.  In fact, the lack of standards makes it impossible for the pundits to see when they are bullshitting themselves and other people.  After all, without standards, who is to say you are wrong or right to assign the priorities you do?  We are free to object to each other’s advice and views and nothing is settled.

So that is the barrier between anything you or I can say, as expert SEO gurus, about what everyone can simply and easily do to optimize their Websites.  If you’re going to write an article about easy search engine optimization anyone can do, I think you should offer self-validating advice.  No one has any reason to trust what we say.  Just look at all the Websites that drop out of search results every year.  These people are following popular, frequently shared advice.  If it’s really that good why does it fail so often?  We have plenty of disclaimers to protect us but more than one small business owner has said to me, “I don’t want excuses.  I want results.”

When explanations = excuses in the eyes of your audience, you’re pitching your guidance to a really skeptical crowd.  They’ll end up buying something from someone because they are desperate.  There is nowhere else to turn to, and that’s not fair to the people who just want reliable advice.  About the best we can do is try to level the playing field for everyone who wants to get started with SEO but has no idea of where to begin.  That means stripping away a lot of assumptions marketers make about what is necessary for search engine optimization.

Easy SEO anyone can do should be self-evident. It should require minimal explanation and justification.

So here is my rule of thumb: if it’s not self-evident then it’s not necessary for search engine optimization.  Anything that has to be explained, justified, or rationalized beyond “here is how it works” is not optimization it’s just a gimmick, perhaps based on opinion and experience, but most likely ultimately driven by someone’s sales pitch.  Most of the advice offered by SEO experts is completely unnecessary to the basic optimization process, but I’ll come back to this below.

I’m being both cynical and skeptical about the entire SEO industry.  We all need to be cynical and skeptical because that is the only way we can validate what we share.  And I don’t mean “wink, wink” faux cynicism and skepticism.  If you call bullshit on someone else because they criticized something you said then you are faking it.  If you call bullshit on someone else because of what they claim then you owe it to everyone to explain what you object to.

Easy Search Engine Optimization Anyone Can Do

To anyone who has been doing SEO for at least six months this will seem like basic stuff.  It is important that we all be able to articulate these or similar self-evident points to ensure that we strip away the gimmicks, sales pitches, and hypothetical solutions.  Self-evident SEO has to work out of the box, free of charge, and anyone should be able to understand why it works with minimal explanation.

You do not need any tools to accomplish these tasks.

If you are trying analyze an SEO problem, ASK QUESTIONS.  Use no tools.  The urge to throw SEO tools into every situation undermines search engine optimization.

MAINTAINING CRAWLABILITY This is a terrible word, “crawlability”, but it’s the only word we have to describe the concept.  A Website has to be crawlable in order for a search engine to index it.  There is nothing to do out of the box to make a Website crawlable.  If you publish content on a URL that any browser can fetch and render then it is crawlable.

Where people get into trouble is by inadvertently blocking search engines from crawling their sites.  Crawl obstruction falls into these categories:

1. Robots directives (in files, meta directives, and X-headers)
2. Run-time errors
3. Broken navigation
4. Improper duplicate management

This 4-item list is already too complex for the vast majority of Website publishers to intuitively understand.  There are approximately 200 million Websites.  Fewer than 10 million of those sites are published with any understanding of crawlability.  In fact, I guarantee you more than half of all experienced Web marketers could not begin to tell you how X-headers are created or how you check them.

He who made the site made it uncrawlable.  If search engines are not crawling the site, ask the site owner what they did.  Don’t fire up your favorite SEO crawler and start needlessly fetching URLs.

VALUE PROPOSITION If you cannot explain what a Website’s purpose is in one sentence then don’t expect a simple-minded search engine to figure that out.  Maybe Bing and Google will get past your vagueness but how can you set any goals if you haven’t decided what the Website is supposed to be doing?

He who built the Website should know why it exists.  If he can’t answer that question with a precise and meaningful sentence, you don’t need any links or crawl reports.  You need a value proposition.

Here are examples of real world value propositions:

• We sell car paint.
• We sell greeting cards.
• We are a platform home craftmakers use to sell their products.
• We are a US politics discussion forum.
• We sell computer parts.
• We sell magazine subscriptions.
• We generate leads for law firms.
• We give away free ebooks.
• We are a non-profit organization and we share information vital to the public about [X].

Value propositions really are not rocket science.  Here are some examples of statements that are not value propositions:

• I was told I need a Website for my business.
• I want to make money on the Web.
• I have a blog.  How do I monetize it?
• I want to become a successful online business.
• I have an idea but I don’t know what to do with it.

In the first list you know exactly what the Website is about.  In the second list you have no idea of what it is about.  There is no search engine optimization without a clear value proposition.

TEXT ON THE PAGE This remains the number one priority in search engine optimization.  For years people with Websites congratulated themselves on “getting to the top” solely because of their backlink profiles.  The search engines indexed the links’ anchor text and treated it as if it was on the page being linked to.  But in a world where you have no links, what do your site’s pages actually say?

We SEO experts do a better job (collectively) of explaining why you need text on the page than we give ourselves credit for.  But we could sure do it with a lot fewer words.  If there is insufficient text on the page to explain your value proposition then people who are searching for your content won’t find it.  That is because you have no content.

SEO Theory Premium Newsletter

Mobile friendly
Delivered every week
Sharing real data, real experiences
Deep insights you won't find anywhere else

Subscribe now. Click here ...

The number 1 mistake Web marketing experts make is talking about queries and keywords.  You should be able to publish content that is found in search without doing any keyword research, without thinking about keywords, without understanding the first thing about how users search for content.

In other words, anyone who can put two sentences together in a meaningful way about a topic they know and understand can optimize for search without keywords and backlinks.  It has always worked that way.  It will never stop working that way.

VISITS AND PAGE VIEWS In the world of simple search engine optimization that anyone can do all you need to know is how many visits you had this month and how many page views those visits entailed.  Anything else, anything more than that is too complicated and NOT self-evident.

If you know that your site received 100 visitors this month that is enough information for you to decide you want 200 visitors next month or a year from now.

SEO Theory Premium Newsletter

Mobile friendly
Delivered every week
Sharing real data, real experiences
Deep insights you won't find anywhere else

Subscribe now. Click here ...

If you know your site generated 100 page views this month that is enough information for you to decide you want 200 page views next month or next year.

This is simple, easy search engine optimization anyone can do.  This is all that is necessary for search engine optimization in terms of measurement.

FULFILL A NEED This is the hard part but it’s still necessary and vital to search engine optimization.  If your site doesn’t fulfill a need then no matter how good it is you have no reason to expect it to do well in search.  There is no amount of research you can do to tell you what needs must be fulfilled.  You will be tempted to ask how you identify these needs, but that is the wrong question.  There is only one question you need to ask and there is only one correct answer:

Whose needs does my site need to fulfill?  (MINE)

You don’t need to make a living on the Internet.  You do need a better way to buy furniture, to fix your car, to find out what is inside that package you just ordered, to pay your taxes, to buy groceries, to understand the disease you’re suffering from.  You as a human being have basic needs.  Your needs will contribute to your Website.  Your needs will contribute to your business.

This is the least clear, the least self-evident aspect of basic search engine optimization.  You have to stop and ask yourself what makes your value proposition unique.  You have to ask what message you will put on the page.  If you can answer these questions from your heart then you know the need you are fulfilling.  There are 100 ecommerce sites selling whatever you want to sell.  The world doesn’t need another opportunistic entrepreneur who wants a piece of the pie.  What the world needs is someone who has figured out a way to deal with their own frustrations as a consumer.  There are never enough adequate solutions to our basic needs.

What is Necessary for Easy Search Engine Optimization?

Let’s recap what I discussed above.  The experienced marketer in me is screaming out “but you can do so much more!”  This is where you have to tell that inner voice of experience to shut up.  It has no place in this conversation.  We’re not talking about all the neat, cool ways you can optimize for search.  All those gimmicks, tricks, strategies, secrets, and tips are the SEO industry’s value proposition.  That body of beliefs, ideas, and knowledge is what sets the hard core SEO community apart from all the bloggers, content marketers, social media experts, and whoever else has an opinion about how to optimize for search.

Basic, simple, easy search engine optimization that anyone can do consists of:

• Maintaining Crawlability
• A Value Proposition
• The Text on the Page
• Counting Visits and Page Views
• Fulfilling a Specific Personal Need

There is nothing more and nothing less to easy, simple, basic search engine optimization that anyone can do.  You build it and the search engines will come.  Getting people to the site only requires one more ingredient:

Publishing content people are looking for.  We can rephrase this as “speaking the same language as the searchers” but we’re still not in the realm of “doing keyword research”.  Keyword research is for geeks and gurus.  It has nothing to do with what is necessary for search engine optimization.

Why You Don’t Need SEO Expert Tips and Tools

In your early days you just need to connect with enough searchers to know that people are looking for what you have to offer.  Anything beyond that is refinement to the nth degree.  That is not necessary for search engine optimization.  Refinement is an option because there a billion ways to refine your Web marketing. Some of them are better than others.  Some refinements are just ripoffs waiting to take your money.

Until you have mastered the basic, simple steps of search engine optimization that anyone can do you really don’t need anything more than that.  You don’t need to pay someone else to give you a value proposition.  You don’t need to pay someone else to figure out what your basic needs are and how they are not being met.  Your frustration as a consumer of products, services, and information should be informing your primal Web marketing.

Your greatest challenge will be putting text on the page.  That really is the hardest part of search engine optimization.  A lot of people don’t put enough text on the page.  Too many Web marketers are putting way too much text on the page. We all need to find the Goldilocks Zone for text on the page.  It’s a never ending experiment in expression.

Artists and photographers are terrible at putting text on the page.  So are people who sign product distribution agreements with manufacturers.  There are indeed real world reasons why some people struggle to put text on the page.  Beginning marketers are so excited to get started blogging they write short, meaningless drivel that, when they look at it years later, they rip off their sites in shame.  To be honest, it’s okay to publish short, meaningless drivel.  The search engines don’t care if you do.  The searchers are not looking for it but it takes practice to become an effective Website writer.

I suppose that means if you write enough spammy guest post pitches you’ll eventually write one that persuades me to accept your crap content and spammy links, but don’t hold your breath waiting for that day to come.  Outreach is nothing like easy search engine optimization that anyone can do.  Given how bad most outreach marketers are at the process, no one should ever include outreach for links in their list of necessary search engine optimization tasks.

If we had real industry standards everyone would understand that.