Search Engine Optimization is dead – Long live Plain English Optimization

So, how did your website fare in the great Google SEOcalypse last week?

Did you lose traffic? Gain it? Did you even notice?

Sistrix tracked the carnage among some of the top so-called content farms on the Internet, based on keyword positioning within search engine results pages [SERPs]. Among the losers in the Sistrix report were Associated Content, Mahalo and Examiner.com.

Personally, I don’t track keyword placement in SERPs for my websites. I track traffic and revenue. And I did see a drop in Google-directed traffic late last week on one of my websites, but a slight increase on the other. When I looked more closely at the loss in Google traffic, I didn’t see in decrease in referrals for the most popular keyphrases people were using to find my site, according to my Google Analytics report. All the loss seemed to be coming from the long tail, the all-but-forgotten, individually low-trafficked discussion threads and obscure listing pages on my site that I would just as soon Google ignore.

Well, consider that wish granted. The data does suggest to me, though, that Google’s not targeting entire sites with this latest algorithm change, but individual pages based on the thoroughness and uniqueness of their content.

Frankly, tracking keywords and obsessing about how highly your copy ranks in search engines provides one of the faster ways to go crazy in the online news business. With Google moving more toward highly personalized SERPs, chasing keywords is a fool’s pursuit.

It’s time to forget about SEO [Search Engine Optimization] and time to focus instead on PEO [Plain English Optimization].

Too many writers think of SEO as writing for computers, when their real focus should be writing to meet the needs of a human audience. Ask yourself these questions whenever you write:

• Are you writing about something that people have personal experience with or personal interest in? Can you express that audience “need” in 10 words or less? Have you done that in the story?
• Does your article do anything to provide a practical take-away that helps readers address this need, whether it be a to-do-list (even a short one) or at least relevant, previously unknown information about the topic? Can you describe that take-away in 10 words or less? Have you done that in the story?
• Are you writing using the words and phrases that normal readers – people who aren’t your sources and co-workers – use when they talk about this topic? Are you using the vocabulary of a 10th grader, or a 10-year professional in the field?
• Describe your piece in three words. Do those three words appear in the headline, the title tag or at least within the opening paragraph? How long does the reader have to read your piece before he or she will know what you’re writing about?
• Are you drowning your reporting under too many words?

These principles aren’t incompatible with SEO, in fact they’re part of what many of us have been suggesting as basic “white hat” SEO principles in the past.

But with SERPs so variable these days, and with too many writers unable to get over the idea that SEO is writing for machines, I think that many of us would find it easier, not to mention far more productive, to think about Plain English Optimization instead.

Think about the people who will read what you write. What are their needs? What are you doing to help meet at least one of those needs in this piece? Are you keeping it clear and simple?

Write to PEO, and the SEO will take care of itself.