Why is SEO so boring?
Hello,
I had a lovely, unexpected review about SEO week on my Blog Confidence course this week. The fabulous Yasmin had this to say:
If you’ve not left a review for a product or service recently, go forth and make someone’s day.
In the same week, I also had a comment which inspired this week’s newsletter. Have a read and feel free to let me know which side of the argument you’re on.
Oh, and I saw a lovely post on the socials this week reminding everyone we are but 8 weeks away from Spotify Unwrapped so if you want to curate a better video best get listening now. I have decided to keep the kids off my Spotify login to try to reduce the amount of punk-pop appearing in this year’s round-up but it might already be too late. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Why is SEO so boring?
“SEO isn’t creative and too restrictive”. That’s the comment I had this week. You’ll be shocked to know that I hugely disagree but I can see why someone might think SEO to be as dull as a family party when you’re a teenager.
So, if you’re thinking SEO doesn’t hit your creative hot spot, here are some reasons why you might be missing out.
1. SEO is about quality content
I think this gets lost in all the talk about technical SEO, on-page, off-page, silos and what-have-you. Yes, there are a lot of considerations, but ultimately, SEO is creating answers to questions that your ideal customer has. And it’s about giving them entertaining answers.
I don’t know about you but I find it’s pretty important to be creative when also being entertaining. If you’re just writing to the keyword and putting out the same old stuff that’s out there then yes, it’s going to be boring. But so is your content.
Whereas, if you’re creating with your customer in mind and showcasing what you can do then that’s not restrictive. In fact, that leads me nicely onto…
2. It’s not just the words
We can get sucked into the idea that SEO is all about the copy on the page. Is the metadata right, are there enough keywords spread out, and have we done a lovely guest blog with the right anchor text? And if you’re doing all that, then great.
But you’re also missing out on audio and video. This could be videos on YouTube Shorts and TikTok. It could be longer videos that you embed on your website. Or creating beautiful images for Pinterest.
There are so many approaches to SEO that words are only a part of it. In fact, you can do some wonderfully exciting and creative work with video. Definitely not restrictive at all.
What’s that overused phrase? The only limitation is your imagination.
If you’re finding SEO a drag then start thinking about what you enjoy doing. Then approach your customers’ questions from that as the starting point.
3. You get to play detective
Oh I love a good puzzle and something being a bit skewiff on a website can throw up a right problem-solving session. I like to think of SEO as playing detective. You need to understand psychology, the audience, a customer journey and how that all fits into getting the content front and centre.
You need to test and trial. Maybe try a few approaches and get creative. Like the other week, I was working on a project for an international business but their website was only getting traffic from the UK. I uncovered the reason why pretty quickly and it was an easy fix. The more complex fix is how they could move on from years of zero traffic in the countries they needed it.
That needed strategic and creative thinking to work around the problem.
Or the clients who have a butt-load of content but it’s not structured properly. The content could be working so much harder than it currently is if it was easier to navigate. This happens quite a bit with established businesses and it’s like getting a messed, knotty ball of fairy lights and needing to untangle them to find out which one is broken.
Then perhaps the best bit of being a detective is finding the right keywords to focus on and how you’re going to group them together. This takes time and practice and again, needs that deep understanding of the audience to do it right.
4. SEO is creating
Yup. Once I’ve done an SEO audit and come up with a strategy, the rest is usually creating content. As with point number two, there are so many great and non-boring ways to do this. However, what I think might be considered “restrictive” is that whole writing for the keyword bit.
Now, my argument for this is something which I cover in the first session of my Blog Confidence course. This is that we need to be restricted to truly open up our creativity. There is a wonderful quote from Jack White that I share:
“Sometimes you just get in there and force yourself to work, and maybe something good will come out, ya know? Deadlines and things make you creative. Opportunity and telling yourself you have all the time in the world, all the money in the world, all the colors in the palette, anything you want - that just kills creativity.”
So you see, having some control over what you need to create can actually help you be more creative.
Okay, but maybe you just find it boring…
I get it. Not every part of marketing is fun and exciting. Many years ago, when I worked at the record label, I had a particular intern come and work with me for a couple of weeks. After the first day, he asked how I could do such a boring job with so many spreadsheets.
For me, the job wasn’t boring. It was exciting and interesting to look at behaviours and predict how many records would need to be pressed. To understand what we could do with a marketing budget and get the most from it. And to think of new ways to influence more sales.
To the intern, it was a bunch of spreadsheets. Nowhere near as fun as doing PR or going out and finding the next big thing. (Although we were all encouraged to do the latter).
For some people, doing this side of digital marketing simply isn’t as fun as creating content for Instagram or TikTok. It’s a lot of using data to see where the opportunities are and how we can make the most of them.
I’d argue that creating bloomin’ brilliant marketing strategies should be about spreadsheets, data, and using those opportunities. And that is where the real creativity lies. Then again, I find SEO exciting.
So if you do find it boring, you don’t necessarily need to have it as part of your content marketing strategy but you might be missing out on some pretty big benefits if you don’t.
How I can help:
Get your content mess sorted out with a Content Clear Out
Untangle your SEO with an SEO Audit
Solve your content conundrums with a Content Clinic
I’m off to see some comedy in London this weekend. I have a horrible feeling that I thought it’d be fun to buy tickets near the front.
Have a great weekend and I’ll see you next Thursday.
Fiona
P.s. I’m thinking of sneaking in an extra round of Blog Confidence before the end of the year with the first session for FREE. If you’re interested, let me know.