SEO in Real Life
How can one explain how a search engine works for SEO newbies? Inspired by Tripp and Tyler, who a few years ago quite successfully put their video “A Conference Call in Real Life” on the web and achieved more than 17 million hits with it, but also in preparation for an SEO workshop with PR consultants, I decided to write a script for a small intimate theater play. My goal was to explain the topic of Search Engine Optimization in simpler terms for beginners.To make it worth reading, I will raffle one of three copies of the book “Methodical Content Marketing” to those who have deciphered all elements of search engines at the end of the article. Do we have a deal? Great, then have fun reading!
A Theater Game from Our SEO Workshop
We find ourselves in the entrance area of the largest library in the world. It is guarded by the smartest, but also most critical librarian in the world.
An unsuspecting and information-needy visitor enters the vicinity and walks purposefully towards the librarian’s counter. She stops abruptly and suddenly begins to speak.
VISITOR
What is the best wrinkle cream?
The librarian considers the question for a moment and answers.
LIBRARIAN
Just a moment, I need to look at my card index.
The card index
She makes an 180° turn on her office chair, approaches towards a gigantic card index box, and begins to speak.
LIBRARIAN
This is very interesting: this month, there have been 4.900 searches for this, and some people even did it several times. It is quite exhausting to search through my entire card index, but it’s still better than constantly marching through the whole library, selecting a book, and then reading through everything. Everything that’s relevant is written on these index cards. Fortunately, I don’t need to write it down myself. That’s what those who submit a book to us do. I do sometimes look at the books, but only at irregular intervals. The fat ones are the worst. If they have a table of contents, that’s half the battle — but I don’t have forever. About 3 minutes is all. Actually I shouldn’t even tell you this, because it’s top secret.
The visitor feels annoyed and frowns. She wants to make a comment, but refrains from doing so and lets the librarian continue.
The hint
The librarian continues.
LIBRARIAN
Ah, here, this might answer your question, quite a good book, I think. It compares the best wrinkle creams of 2020.
VISITOR
How do others feel about it?
LIBRARIAN
Other books also refer to it, and they are even quoted in the SPIEGEL. That’s saying something. Here’s another book that might interest you: the author describes how he makes his own wrinkle cream, a mega-hot topic. I’ve also got a few biographies on wrinkle cream inventors.
VISITOR
I’m not interested in that, at least not yet, maybe later… This test story interests me. That one over there on the billboard, does that work? Is that a true classic?
The advertising billboard
The librarian twitches imperceptibly as if she feels caught. She continues.
LIBRARIAN
The one on the billboard is fine. It’s just… advertising. We have to make a living, too, after all. Well, I highly recommend the book, but the really professional stuff is on the shelves. The wrinkle cream test book is right there on the front shelf. I put it there because it’s so popular. You might also be interested in the books in the back. Anyway, that book is over there.
VISITOR
Okay, I’ll go there then.
The cassette
The visitor shuffles towards the shelf, while the librarian looks at her once more. Then the librarian abruptly turns back to her chair and presses the stop button on the small voice recorder, which is invisibly placed in the top drawer of her desk.
She removes the cassette, puts it into a transparent, cylindrical plastic container and pushes it into the in-house transfer system. The guys in the basement will know what to do with it.
The End
The Lottery
As already mentioned, my little theater play is full of idioms for the Google algorithm, Google search results, internal links, external links, off page optimization, technical SEO, organic search results and much more. If you’d like the chance to win one of three copies of my book “Methodical Content Marketing” published last year by Springer Gabler Verlag, just send an email with all the decoded elements and the corresponding text passages to mailbox@crispycontent.de and you’re in. The answers will be published here in one of the upcoming blog posts.
Our Offer
Originally published at https://www.crispycontent.de on March 22, 2020.
