Spiders vs Eyeballs

One of the big questions we receive regularly has to do with the quality of our client media: What works, and what doesn't.

This is a great question. It allows us to talk about spiders vs eyeballs.

You SEO-SEM folks know exactly what I'm talking about. You business and media guys might need a primer. So here we go:

1) Search engines have quality issues:
    • The quality of your code
    • The quality of your words
    • The quality of your links

They're not too picky about the quality of your media. Marissa Mayer (VP Google Search and Customer Experience) says Google is getting better, but currently doesn't know good from bad. A 30 second video is simply video content. It's the words, tagging and linking that make it special.

2) People care about a different type of quality:
    • The quality of your presentation
    • The quality of your storytelling
    • The surprising revelations you provide
    • The instructional guidance you present
    • Your value proposition and USP

We could go on, but you get the idea. People have quality standards based on their life experience and their needs. Meet those standards, and you might get some eyeball time.

So, Spiders vs Eyeballs.

When we create or edit content, we we want it to perform.
We lean toward quality content that is very searchable, relevant, dynamic, on-message.

You should, too.

Doing so assures you will get search results. And if you go the extra mile and create quality content (which, with todays readily available and affordable tools and outsourced talent, should be no problem), then you get eyeballs as well. And lots of eyeballs, in the form of page and content views, comments, links all lead to improved search results and traffic.

We're creating a Content Standards document for you that will help as you lean into Universal Search, as well as collecting eyeballs. Soon as it's available, we'll post it for you.

Aaron of Prime Advertising & Design reiterated some important elements in his recent post regarding video quality and "repurposing your media assets". Worth the read.