On Menus and SEO or Some Tasty Titbits for Online

A few days ago, I found myself sitting in yet another meeting trying to explain SEO to the editors who upload content onto their websites.

I've been through all the technicalities before, explaining how a search engine works and why SEO (search engine optimisation) is important and some of the techniques for writing for the web. 

In the end, I sent out this email which explained it in terms I best knew how: In the language of food and dining out.

SEO on the Menu or Some Tasty Titbits for Online

When you are giving your article a title for online think of its searchability like this: If you were looking at a menu in a restaurant, and you saw "gratin dauphinoise" you'd maybe give it a skip because you don't know what that is. What it really is, is potato bake.

In the same way, you have to ask yourself what is it that my readers would search for? If it doesn't come through in the title, then people and search engines are more likely to overlook the article even if the subject matter is EXACTLY the same thing.

Similarly with tags. Think of tags as a list of the ingredients that you would find listed under the menu item. So if you see potatoes, cream, milk and cheese, and that it is baked, this would tell you what you are about to order. (Ordering here is analogous to clicking and opening the article, in case you were wondering)

Lastly, what one has to remember about web, is that it is largely about catering to the nature of the web, so beyond titles and tags, one has to craft an online article to be SEO friendly or Search Engine Optimised - kinda in the same way that a restaurant owner has to make sure that they put items on the menu that his / her patrons are going to order.

This is a particularly difficult aspect of web writing to explain to people who work in print, where one has the leisure to peruse an article, the nature of web and reading on a screen means that one has to keep it short. Think of print as fine dining ; something you would do at your leisure whereas copy on the web is a little more like takeout. But what you want, in the end, is for people to get your takeout!