Don’t Focus On the Sauce When You Have a Rotten Fish! Why a Few SEO Tricks Don't Compensate For Quality Content.
Mmmmmm … Currywurst …
Delicious!
*Stomach rumbles while drool rolls down my chin*
Oh, sorry. You caught me thinking about one of my favorite foods that I ate during my last trip to Germany.
If you’ve never had Currywurst before, it’s basically just sausage smothered in ketchup and curry powder. It’s a very simple concept, but the combination is absolutely delicious.
The story goes that a woman named Herta Heuwer invented the recipe after she obtained either ketchup or Worcestershire sauce and some curry powder from British soldiers in Germany back in 1949.
The fact that someone was able to create such a popular type of food by starting out with just two condiments is pretty interesting to me. I’m not a professional chef or anything, but I imagine most recipes don’t come into existence from someone trying to reinvent how ketchup is poured onto a hot dog.
If I was trying to go down in culinary history, I don’t think I’d focus on the sauce as the starting point of my gastronomic masterpiece. In that sense, I think Currywurst was sort of a fluke.
But more importantly, the recipe was ultimately a huge success because the resulting combination tastes great and all of the ingredients are already good on their own. It’s an all-around quality product for the casual diner.
Now imagine if ol’ lady Herta had poured her curry-ketchup concoction on some stinky rotten fish floating around in a bowl of spoiled milk. No matter how good the ketchup curry sauce combination tasted on its own, the rest of the recipe would have been a disaster!
That’s kind of what happens when an online business focuses exclusively on trying to get good results through Search Engine Optimization manipulation techniques without already having a quality product in place to begin with.
The result is a stinky rotten ketchup fish instead of yummy German street food.
You see, SEO is really just the sauce on top of our bratwurst.
It’s good, but it’s definitely NOT the entire meal.
Things just don’t work as well without that sausage. There still has to be something good underneath the sauce for people to want to buy the whole thing.
Is winning the Google rankings lottery a good thing?
Absolutely! In fact, it’s a VERY good thing.
But that shouldn’t be your ENTIRE game plan. Especially if doing so comes at the expense of neglecting the quality of the actual product.
Having quality content already in place is much more important than gaming the Google algorithms to sell strategic content creation/copywriting.
Effective Search Engine Optimization is great, because it drives hordes of free traffic to your website.
Profit margins go up while customer-acquisition costs disappear (like I do when it’s my turn to change the baby’s diaper).
Appearing on the first page of Google can make a huge difference and I’m a big fan of SEO when it’s done right (and I tend to talk about it a lot for that very reason). Getting that kind of easy money is simply fantastic!
The problem happens when new online business owners come to me complaining that their customer acquisition numbers are low and to remedy the situation they decide that the only thing they’re missing is SEO.
WRONG!
That’s like saying that a car without an engine won’t start because it needs a new coat of paint.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if an online business can’t be profitable unless it’s in the good graces of the Google ranking algorithm gods, then there are much bigger problems at hand.
Furthermore, Google frequently changes their algorithms and has even imposed penalties on companies abusing their system in the past. It takes knowledge of how the system works to avoid such unpleasant consequences.
Sure, I can help with SEO issues and there are tons of resources out there covering the topic. But unless the quality of the overall product itself is improved, we’re still basically just smothering curry-flavored ketchup onto a stinky rotten fish at that point.
SEO tricks should be a part of the marketing plan, not the entire execution strategy.
Look, I’ll say it again just to drive the point home. I’m a fan of SEO done the right way. I really am. It can be a truly wonderful thing for an online business and I like the benefits that it brings. I can write many blogs for SEO.
Having lots of relevant content is the most important factor in Google’s search engine algorithm and the only way to generate plenty of relevant information is through consistent blogging, articles and website content creation.
And guess what? When a website has really great content, Google will often times reward it with a good search ranking automatically. Further effort might not even be necessary. In many cases, the amount of time and money required for SEO drops to virtually nothing.
Just remember that SEO is the sauce. Not the meat.
So if you have a rotten fish of a website, don’t pour ketchup and curry powder on it (metaphorically speaking). And don’t try to fix the problem by dwelling on SEO tactics alone.
Focus on having high quality content first and foremost. Make sure that your website is up to date or else it could be lacking many of the current requirements for Search Engine Optimization.
Once you do those things, the great search-engine results will naturally follow!
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