It’s Not Google’s Fault Your Site Isn’t Useful

June 9th, 2006

Let’s talk about a simple truth that many webmasters and business owners can’t grasp: If your site isn’t showing up in Google it’s probably because it’s not useful.

Well ok it may be useful, but not in the way you want it to be. One of the hardest things to do in SEO is to look at your site from the perspective of a searcher. That’s why it’s a great idea to hire a 3rd party company, they’re not attached to your site in any way; they have no feelings to hurt.

I wanted to talk about a company who fired me after I said I couldn’t make their “contact us” page rank for a software related term, but I feel it’d be better if I use a fictional example.

John owns a chimney sweeping company, and he’s really frustrated that he can’t get on the front page of Google for “chimney sweeping”.

John’s done his SEO, he’s traded links, got listed in all the good directories, put out press releases, wrote articles, has a blog and a newsletter, updates his content frequently, has a good PageRank, and even an affiliate program, but he just can’t crack the top page of Google.

Eventually John gives up and buys AdWords, then swears it’s a Google conspiracy to force him into buying AdWords. He even makes a post on Matt Cutts blog accusing Google of unfairly not ranking his “useful” site.

The problem here is that while John’s site IS useful, it’s NOT useful to somebody searching for “chimney sweeping”.

Among the top results for “chimney sweeping” we see: National association of, how to guide, training school, job profile, and how to find a chimney sweep.

These are useful sites. Why? the term “chimney sweeping” implies that the searcher is looking for information about the topic, NOT a chimney sweeping company. If they were, they’d have searched for “chimney sweep Boston” or “chimney sweeping company”. These are the terms John should focus on if he wants to show up on page 1.

Since John never did his research and couldn’t look at his site from the perspective of a searcher, he wasted months optimizing for terms that he really shouldn’t be a top result for.

That’s what SEO is about. It’s not about tricking the search engines or writing code to make your site better than others. It’s about anticipating what somebody is searching for, and then building a site that is relevant to that search - from the searcher’s perspective.

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