Search Engine Optimisation

I’ve been carrying out a lot of online research of late – we’ve a couple of new projects in the offing – that has meant a lot of analyse of online content and what the ‘competition’ delivers. I’m sorry to say there are an awful lot of poor buying and review sites out there and for the most part, people are being short changed.

The problem is that there seems to be a land-grab mentality going on. That as long as you SEO something close to death and get people to click on that search then all is good. Too many sites seem to have got their headlines working well but when it comes to backing it up with actual content, you’ll find it sadly lacking.

Promising something and not delivering.  The worst offenders tend to be the larger online publishing sites, who insist that [Product Name] News, Specs, Video, Review, Tips be added to all and sundry, whether they’ve actually got content or not. What’s the worst offence online a publisher can make?

Another one that seems to crop up a good deal is calling a quick fondle and a photo of a gadget at a press show a ‘Full Review’. This kind of thing is great from an SEO point of view as it gets you to the top of the food chain nice and quickly but it also means your site loses all sense of credibility. How many times does someone need to get short changed before the next time they see your site in a Google search and think ‘No, that site is rubbish!’ – not many I can tell you.

On the plus side, there are plenty of good sites out there with plenty of information to offer. What I’m suggesting is there should be more online etiquette – be honest about what you have to offer and maybe, just maybe, it’ll help you to raise your game a little.

Is it laziness on publishers part, or is it, as my headline suggests, the fault of SEO and the almighty push for keyword optimisation? Surely, content is and always should be king. Content is something we at Republic are passionate about. We all come from editorial backgrounds so know the power of the word. Get the content and the SEO right and you have websites that grow month on month, which is something we’re proud to admit to be doing nicely, thank you very much!