The turn of the year brought us Christmas, New Years Eve, and one of my favorite favorite ideas: The Library Analogy. The premise is simple, the easiest way to explain SEO to someone unfamiliar with search engines, websites, or optimization, is to compare the practice to managing a library.
I won’t go into the detail again but consider that the answer to SEO lies not within a book but the library itself. Think of websites as books and Search Engines, librarians, and you are half way there.
Jean-Eric Penicaud, COO of DirectoryM, has breathed more into the idea with a MediaPost article, “Breathing New Life – And Revenue – Into Online Content”
Just as a library drives foot traffic, online publishers should be looking to apply the same principles to drive Web traffic. However, as publications have moved online over the past 10 to 15 years, they’ve naturally adopted the same mindset and business model that had worked for hundreds of years before. As one issue was completed, they retired it and moved on to the next. As such, most publishers are making one major mistake by not using their most valuable asset — their content — to its fullest potential.
Of greatest note, Jean-Eric suggests extending the life of your content by distributing it; that is, an easily overlooked opportunity to retain customers and engage new audiences is through syndication or through referrals created from email distribution. Reading the premise, I smiled at the missed opportunity to extend the Library analogy further; your website needs a Book Mobile.
Your goal, with both SEO and distribution, is to increase the accessibility of your content and your website. Fail to do either and you shouldn’t bother to have a site.