Riddle: In What Way is a Professional SEO Like Alex “Hitch” Hitchens?
In this video Ross Barefoot discusses how SEO is like a professional date doctor. Find out more about this “Fresh Prince” take on Search Engine Optimization by either watching the video or reading the transcript. Post any questions you have in the comments, or simply contact us for more information.
Transcript of Video
Hi, welcome to Horizon Web Marketing. One of the things we do is SEO, and that stands for Search Engine Optimization, but even when I tell people that they don’t know what I’m talking about. The purpose of this video is to tell you very basically and at a very high level what is SEO, and if you’re a business person with a website that’s very useful information.
Before I do that though I’m going to ask you 3 questions to qualify whether you need to spend any time with this video.
Question number 1: Do you have a website?
Next question: Do you want people to visit it?
3rd question: Do those people that you want to visit your website use Google?
If you answered no to any of those questions, you have better things to do than to listen to me. But if you answered yes to these questions then you do need to know what SEO is and the effect it can have on your business website. Instead of giving you a technical explanation about SEO I thought I’d rely on popular culture and use an analogy from the movies.
Have you ever seen the movie “Hitch”? In the movie Hitch Wil Smith plays a character named Alex “Hitch” Hitchens, and Alex Hitchens is a profession “date doctor.” What that means is, he helps awkward, unpopular guys get the girl of their dreams.
So, let’s break this down and use it to describe what we do in the process of SEO. We do very much what “Hitch” did. Think of the girl of your dreams as Google. Think of the awkward, unpopular guy as your website. Think of the SEO consultant or company, like Horizon Web Marketing, as Alex Hitchens…Hitch…the date doctor.
So, if you remember the movie (and even if you didn’t see the movie you’ll be able to follow this analogy), there are three basic steps to go through in helping the awkward, unpopular guy become the guy who will land the girl. And the first is, to make the guy tolerable. This is the same with your website, and it translates into something that we call in SEO making your site “search engine friendly.” I’m not going to go into a big explanation of what that is but to say it’s to remove those things that tend to drive Google away, tend to make your site the “dog.”
Second step, after that’s done, is we need to make your website likable. And so for the likable part we engage in a practice called “Content Development,” because after all, we need your website to be more than just a pretty face, and so you need quality content that offers value. To the type of person who’s going to visit your site and we help you to accomplish that.
The third part is let’s go from likable to highly desirable. Highly desirable corresponds to something we do called link popularity building. That’s a process of attracting other websites to link to your website. Let’s face it, if you’re the popular guy at the party you’re going to attract attention; if you’re sitting over in a corner, nobody’s talking to you, nobody’s going to talk to you. So when it comes to your website, we do things that help your website attract links from other websites in order to raise your link popularity.
No matter what stage your website is at right now, our process as SEO experts is to take it from tolerable, to likable, to highly desirable so that you can catch the eye of that girl of your dreams, namely that pretty Google search engine sitting in the corner.
If you want more technical explanation, or if you want us to take a look at your site and see how you could benefit from the SEO that we do, please contact Horizon Web Marketing, we’ll be glad to follow up, give you a bit more explanation and, we hope, get you where you need to be.
Obviously, there’s more to SEO than this…
This video was obviously not meant to be exhaustive. It doesn’t cover things like keyword research, tracking results, determining goals, and tons of other stuff. To find out more, browse around our site or simply give us a call.
Ross Barefoot got his start in small business managing an importing company in the bicycle industry. While there, he tried his hand at programming to find more effective ways to track, market and sell his company’s range of bicycle parts. He loved the web marketing side of things so much he became a professional web developer in 2001, starting a website design business in Western Colorado. He took his first SEO certification course from the Search Engine Academy in 2002, followed it up with another in 2004, and decided to jump full time into SEO training and consulting in 2011, becoming a Master Certified Instructor with the Search Engine Academy, where he continues to serve on the Board of Directors. Today, Ross is CTO, trainer and chief SEO strategist at Horizon Web Marketing (www.horizonwebmarketing.com), a full-service digital marketing agency based in Las Vegas.
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