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Theresa Regli

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SEO: furthering the case for better content hygiene

9-May-2008

Tags: Enterprise Search, Web Analytics, Implementation, Information Architecture

The worlds of SEO and enterprise search are not as far apart as you might think. Let me explain. Along with my colleague Alan, I had the pleasure of attending the upbeat Internet World UK conference earlier this month in London. What I enjoy most about attending such large, diverse events is going to sessions about technologies related to, but not directly about, the technologies I cover -- and so I found myself attending numerous sessions on SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.

Though there was an inquisitive crowd present for my talk, the topic I spoke about -- enterprise search -- is much lower on the totem pole for e-marketers (the principal attendees at this event) than SEO. A few showed up, in fact, wanting to better understand the nuances of website search vs. enterprise search vs. SEO. Are there universal things we can do to simultaneously improve all things, I was asked? Indeed. Despite the differences in searching the web, searching within your enterprise, and making your own website more findable by search engines, many of the same best practices apply.

As readers of The Enterprise Search Report know, good content hygiene is essential to good search results. Consistent content structure, metadata, and simple things like clear and meaningful document titles all help search engines work better -- be they the public (e.g., Google) website, or enterprise kind. But in most cases, content managers don't know where to start with their clean-up: it's an often overwhelming task. As such, content clean-up continues to get cast aside ("too much work"), and search technology vendors make it seem that much less important when they promote technology as the panacea to content woes. Don't believe it for a second.

A few more tidbits from the event:

1. These days, 80% of e-commerce transactions start with a web search, says Dan Cohen, Head of SEO for MSN UK.
2. The #1 hindrance to SEO is poor content and code (which also highly contributes to poor web and intranet search results)
3. Creating clear, topic-related content "hubs" on your web site is the next most important thing for SEO
4. As readers of our Web Analytics Report know, analytics should be a core part of your e-marketing pie, to get a clear picture of what your customers are looking for and where they're getting stuck.

Bottom line: cleaning up your content can improve your website search results and your Google ranking.