I used to get annoyed with all the SEO talk. Why would I want to optimize our website for a robot anyway? Now, I’m starting to see to there’s a healthy, honest, and enjoyable way to improve websites with search in mind.
What did I hate about SEO?
I’ll be honest, the idea of SEO was extremely annoying to me. I’ve brought up questions about Google ranking with a couple of web design agencies in the past and they told me to just focus on building a good website and don’t worry about SEO.
“It will come” they said. And I was glad to take their recommendation.
Here are a few reasons why I dreaded thinking about SEO (even when my boss assigned me to research the opportunities):
I didn’t want to write for robots.
Focusing on SEO used to sound like “making the Google gods happy.” I got into the marketing world because I want to find creative ways to solve problems for businesses and promote businesses/services I believe in—not sell stuff people don’t need.
I really don’t like paid advertising either (usually), because it feels like I’m pushing something on someone else before they even indicate they are interested.
When I write, and when I invest time in communicating something, I want to speak to a person. I want to start a blog, sales page, or website homepage with a person’s face in my mind—not Google data.
I didn’t think people would search for what we provide.
Most of my on-the-ground marketing experience comes from my time at Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a Christian wilderness camp in North Carolina.
We have made some deeply-grounded decisions to focus on the spiritual growth and development of churches and families we serve—so we’re a little unique compared to many summer camps. If a parent is looking for a fun summer camp to send their kids away for six weeks, then we’re not the right fit. Our approach to Christian ministry and camp fits a certain type of person, really well.
I was certain that person would only trust the word of mouth from a trusted friends before pulling the trigger and signing up. Google would be the last place they would search for a church partner they could entrust their middle and high school students with.
I assumed we would need to start paying for Google ads to be found.
We had tried some Google ads in the past and didn’t have much luck. Meaning, I think we spent over $1,000 several years back and no one ever committed to attending Snowbird through those ads. Feeding the Google ads monster is a slippery slope if you’re not careful.
Our results were likely from not knowing what we were doing, but I didn’t want to repeat that cycle of wasting valuable budget dollars.
Let’s be real, aren’t most of the results on the first page of Google paid ads anyway?
I didn’t want us to bend rules and find loopholes.
When you’re writing for robots and algorithms, you are tempted to focus on loopholes rather than simply work hard. Thankfully, I knew our team’s integrity and culture were strong but I was concerned SEO was an area we couldn’t compete in if we held to our convictions.
Some businesses used to practice “black hat SEO” and pay unrelated sites to link to them. Others have specific (brutally detailed) processes of how many times they use a keyword, and where it’s used. I didn’t want to play the game of making sure we used “XYZ” keyword in the first word of the page title, the first sentence, and in every sub-header.
That’s a great way to ruin the experience for your website visitors.
If you start with Google (or any other search engine) as your customer, then you end up being a slave for the rest of the article. And, no real human will get any value out of it.
There’s a Better Way to Approach SEO
I was right to be disgusted by those tactics. There are numerous people and businesses who approach their search ranking with only dollar signs in their eyes.
But that’s not the only way to get more organic traffic. You can build a website that serves your clients well, shows the quality of your work, and gets found on search engines.
Tomorrow, I’ll share a bit about my journey to understanding the right way to approach SEO.
