De over ons-pagina is een van de belangrijkste pagina’s voor B2B’s en dienstverleners als we het hebben over GEO. En het probleem: hij is vaak in erbarmelijke staat. Achterhaald, vergeten, verouderd en verstoft. Een cruciale fout wat mij betreft.
It’s not just at conferences. I also see it when I meet other SEO’s at social gatherings, when I give trainings about content… SEO’s are always focused on the website and interested in subjects like link value, internal linking, crawling & indexing, website content audits, scaling textual content with AI…. And honestly, I’m a little baffled.
>> Why is the focus still so heavily on the website when we talk about SEO? And why is it always about textual content?
A short rant about our obsession with text and websites and why that’s a big problem these days.
First of all, it’s pretty obvious where this obsession comes from. SEO used to be all about the texts on our websites. Back in the days of the 10 blue links, the website was the only thing that mattered. But anyone who’s even mildly paying attention to the SERPs should be able to see that things are changing drastically. I’m constantly digging in the SERPs myself (honestly, I could call myself a full-time SERP-watcher). The consequence? In my daily practice, the focus is hardly on websites and texts anymore…
Take a look at these search results for the keyword “anti-transpirant deodorant.” In the carousel below, you can see all the screenshots. And what stands out? Sure, you’ll still see some websites and their PLPs ranking, but the real attention is drawn by AI Overviews, organic shopping results, videos, and brands. I counted just six traditional SEO results (PLP’s) from websites: Amazon, Eucerin, Allure, NBC, Oreole-shop, and Target. In the “what people are saying” carousel, the spots are divided among websites, YouTube, YouTube Shorts, and social platforms.
This isn’t a one-off example. Search for “which hair straightener is best” and you’ll see more of the same: videos and organic shopping.
Same goes for “DJI Pocket 3” (you definitely should buy one, read this blog and you will understand why). It’s about videos, videos and videos. And here and there some webpages.
And ‘contouring’:
Or ‘white wine’:
Or what to think about ‘necklace gold’:
Or ‘silk flowers’:
If you’re paying attention to the search results, you have to admit we’re in the middle of a major shift. In SEO the majority of what we used to see were webpages like plp’s or blogarticles.
Nowadays we’re seeing more and more videos, shorts, and product feeds. And that means that every SEO working on content absolutely needs to broaden their perspective beyond the website and beyond text. And every SEO working in e-commerce should master feedmanagement ASAP. Drop that focus on the PLP and shift towards feed en internal UX where people can easily find matching and related products.
As someone who has a passion for content marketing (content marketing didn’t just call me, it chose me) I would like to dig deeper into that part of the SERPS so lets talk about stories and videos
You might be thinking: “I’ll do mine (SEO), and you do yours (socials)” leaving short videos to the social media department. That’s an option but I don’t think it’s necessarily a smart one. Maybe I’m biased (as I mostly work with Dutch companies) but I see a lot of social marketers who are creating commercial posts or boring static posts starring even more boring product photo’s… That is not the kind of content we need if we want to rank in Google.
This leads to brands leaving huge opportunities on the table…. opportunities that influencers are seizing, because they know what good (helpful) content actually is and how to review a product in a way that is valuable to the end user. Take a look below: no makeup brands in sight, just influencers who are all highly visible.
I’m guessing the SEO teams for those makeup brands are working hard on textual website content. And yes, those sites do rank but they’re definitely being overshadowed by al the attention drawing videos.
Want to know more? Also read my article about ‘Creating content for SEO in a zero-click world’ from october 2024 which was shared by Aleyda Solís on LinkedIn and the SEOFOMO newsletter
If you ask me, I think every SEO should start TODAY by checking out the 10–20 most important SERPs for their business and analyzing what is ranking: Is it still mostly blogs and PLPs or do you see product pages, organic shopping results, videos, shorts or images?
This quick, simple, yet highly effective analysis instantly reveals where we should focus our attention.
When done we can decide:
Believe me, in a world where Google randomly sends people to rando products when they search for generic terms (mascara, green winter coat, women’s Asics running shoes), you want the visitor to be able to find related products on your site fast before they bounce back to Google to click on another product. Remember the Navboost thingy?
No of course not. Text matters and websites matter. You are now on a website also reading a text.
But the key word here is focus. If you play it smart, you’ll develop a workflow that lets you create all the content you see ranking in Google efficiently. It’s not rocket science. It’s simple: find your experts, start with video and know your AI tools to turn that video into a powerful content canon.
You are not here because you found my page in Google. You are here because it’s shared in Aleyda’s SEOFOMO. And I was able to make this page quickly because I was talking about this subject last month at Friends of Search (where I was in a line up with Lily Ray and Rand Fishking btw, how cool!!)
So I know what I am talking about when I say you can create textual content from videos. And I know you can create shorts from it. And only if I get a little bit more online EEAT, Google might start showing this page or my shorts in the SERP. Or my video from Brighton 2024 about what EEAT really is… but I am getting a little bit distracted here. Lets go…
So, what I justed wanted to sa: if you want to write a blog about how to wash greasy hair? Clean your kitchen hood? Remove algae from garden tiles? Take care of a cactus? Whatever it is, find an expert, put them on camera, hit record, show the product, let them explain and get going.
Actually, that’s how you use AI to create content: you bring the expertise, they stitch the words together.
Your YouTube video can rank in Google, just like your Shorts can. The text? You publish it on your website so that both Google and LLM tools can crawl and analyze it, helping you get found or cited there as well.
In this approach, text is just one of many end products, not the one and only major thing SEO’s working on content should be creating. A solid content strategy doesn’t start with keywords and text. It’s also not limited to texts. It ends with keywords and texts.
A solid content strategy starts with identifying the right informational needs, the QPAFFCGMIMs of your audience, and finding an angle that adds real value to what’s already out there. This is the foundation for the stories you need to cover in your content. The next stip is to collect the information (video + expert) and after that, you can turn your insights into content.
Remember, the web these days is solely about adding value to it and making sure you get the attention from your customer. Adding value is not that hard. You can do it by choosing other shapes/formats or you do it by delivering truly distinctive content: information that goes beyond what everyone else is already sharing online.”
If you adapt to this way of working, you still end up with everything you’ve ever needed for SEO… and more. And you’ll automatically meet the requirements of Helpful Content and EEAT because you are actually helping the user to get their information in the shape and format they want.
Content is helpful if it addresses your ideal customer’s QPAFFCGMIMs: their Questions, Problems, the Alternatives they can choose from, their Concerns, the Goals they want to reach, the Myths they heard of, Interests they have and common Misunderstandings, in short everything they want to know, that occupies them, or keeps them up at night. So it’s no longer about keywords here. You can still optimize for keywords, but that’s for a later time.
This approach will lead to unique and relevant content that ads value to the web, exactly what Google and your user is searching.
Many people ask me if this is something the SEO should do. The thing is: I’m not sure if it necessarily needs to be the SEO who does this, social marketeers can also do it. But what I do believe is that SEO professionals need to evolve. If you are an SEO who is specialized in content and by that, primarily website texts, and you continue to limit yourself to just that, you will eventually become obsolete.
As said, text is important. But it’s no longer enough in a world where other things are ranking, in a world where search behavior is evolving and people are searching everywhere. Google and SEO shouldn’t be the lens anymore, content should be. Content that helps you build a brand and that is continously relevant for the user and can’t be missed when they are online. Content strategies needs to have a proactive side (to go out there and find your customer where they are so they can discover and find you) and a reactive side (where you can be found by people actually searching for you or your website).
I see this as an opportunity for content-focused SEOs to evolve in that direction. Let the technical SEO’s handle the website, structure, and evolve towards UX. But if your heart lies with content, I believe this is the path to follow — because honestly, I can’t imagine a future where you’ll still be relevant if your entire role revolves around writing text for websites.
Do you want to get more out of SEO and get started with organic marketing?
I am more than happy to help you with creating helpful content for organic marketing in zero-click world where it’s more and more about videos. Together we will work on creating your ideal customer profile and determining where and when you can reach your audience with the right message based on their QPAFFCGMIMs. Next, we will start creating content for all organic channels.
