Sep 30 2008
Acting Like The Search Engines Don’t Exist - Human Engine Optimization
Shoemoney.com had an excellent posting today titled “The Screw Google Mentality“. At first glance as the title I thought it was another “I don’t need Google and they can kiss my butt” posting, but I was wrong. Jeremy says he used that term while speaking at IzeaFest and it appeared to create some reaction from people. I read his story and what he was saying in short was that if we design and develop our sites as if Google doesn’t exist then we might actually be doing ourselves a favor because we will be concentrating on the user experience more, which in the end will drive traffic to the site.
I responded in the comments that maybe we should take that thought process a little further and actually see what happens when we develop a website as if there were no search engines at all. If we then had to rely soley on word of mouth references to get visitors, how much more effort would we put into creating a truely top notch website?
I have made reference in the past to my not using link exchanges, paid advertising or social networking to promote my top ranked sites. This is because I build my sites to provide an answer to what someone is looking for. If a visitor finds what he needs at one of my sites then he or she is likely to remember that site for future reference and keep coming back. That visitor will also refer other to the site.
By spending more time developing top quality content and real answers to visitors needs I will see the natural outcome is a successful SEO (or as I said in my comments a successful Non-SEO campaign). Google and the other search engines will see the naturally occuring one way links into my site that start to appear after visitors start referring the site as well as a continued effort by me to produce orginal top quality content for my visitors. This of course will never settle well with the “get rich quick” set.
So, maybe the key to successful search engine optimization is really working as if search engines don’t exist. Maybe we should call it Human Engine Optimization or HEO.
