Why SEO Would Matter Even If Search Engines Stopped Running

“Isn’t SEO just the practice of gaming the search engines?”

If you’ve ever had to make the case for SEO, this Molotov cocktail of cynicism has likely been lobbed your way.

“But good content doesn’t need an SEO strategy.”

Right. It doesn’t. And horses don’t need saddles. But things go a heck of a lot smoother if you have one.

“SEO is just a temporary solution; the way technology changes it’ll be obsolete in a few years anyway.”

Yes, you’re probably right. And this whole Internet fad is probably on its last legs, too.

But I’m not here to make counterarguments to SEO cynics. Because the larger argument is this: Even if Google folded, Bing disappeared, and Yahoo went back to being just another name for crazy, SEO would still matter.

Why? Because the practice of SEO will make your website better, stronger, and easier to use, even if the search engines stopped crawling. Think about it: 

What’s Easier to Sort Through: a Filing Cabinet or a Messy Desk Drawer?

SEO forces you to go through the exercise of mapping out your content and the hierarchy of categories, topics, and ideas.

It also forces you to pinpoint the focus of any piece of content you create (and helps you avoid creating aimless content written to a general yet non-existent audience.)

If you apply this filing cabinet metaphor at the granular level, major ranking factors for SEO have practical applications outside of “getting more traffic from search” that improve a user’s experience with your content.

Every Piece of Web Content Should Be Focused on a Singular Topic

Identifying an individual keyword or phrase that a given post or page is about helps you keep your focus around a certain idea without meandering or getting sidetracked. This helps you to create content that answers a specific question or responds to a specific need of a potential site visitor.

That way, you’re a laser, not a Swiss army knife.

Page Titles Still Matter without Search Engines

Page titles are like the tab in your filing cabinet that you thumb through when looking for a particular file.

Labeling a page on your website clearly and accurately allows a visitor to quickly understand if the page is the file they were looking for.

In practical terms, the page title is also:

• The “label” that is automatically generated when someone bookmarks your article
• The title they see in your RSS feed
• The headline generated when they post your article to Facebook (and other social media outlets)
• The text they see if they have several tabs open in their browser
• The thing that makes people click or not click your link, in many contexts

Most importantly, it provides context at-a-glance for someone who stumbles upon your content. Done correctly, they understand exactly what the focus of the article is going to be.

Writing a Meta Description Has Benefits Beyond SEO

Your meta description is a reality check to see if your content is coherent. This one is worth it for the exercise of writing it alone. This is your page’s “elevator pitch.” In other words, it should explain what a human would expect to find in your article. If it can’t be written in less than 160 characters, the focus of the article may be too broad.

It is also the automatically generated description that shows up when someone shares your content on Facebook (and in some other outlets).

Headlines and Headings Make Content Easier to Read

Magazines do this very well. A heading should summarize the paragraph that follows. Think of them as mini-headlines for each section of your content.

Besides, “people rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page.” And when they scan, headings can be their guideposts.

Many readers will scroll quickly through a blog post subconsciously checking the headlines to see if they have interest in investing a bit more time to actually read your content. Having no headings means you’ll lose the attention of some readers.

SEO Best Practices Ensure You Have Better Body Copy

A blog post should be long enough to cover a topic, and short enough to keep the reader’s attention (I know I’m risking it here). Key information should be bolded. Relevant content should be linked to for readers who want more information. And images should have alt text that appears if for whatever reason the image doesn’t load.

Search algorithms try to mimic human behavior. People want to quickly find an answer to their question that is easy-to-read, well-labeled, accurate and concise.

The best digital marketers understand that SEO best practices mean organizing and labeling your content in a way that communicates what the page is about to a human.

And satisfied human customers are most likely to share your content.

This post originally appeared on Jason Falls’ SocialMediaExplorer.com.