VEO and why every content writer should love the idea...
VEO (visitor enhanced optimization) is the brainchild of online marketing wiz Colin McDougall. In essence, it's McDougall's answer to SEO (search engine optimization) and his perspective, if accurate, could be a boon to online content writers.
McDougall's VEO Report argues that the days of search engine success via inflated backlink totals and keyword-stuffed text are over. It's time for those serious about succeeding online to adopt a strategy not based on staying one step ahead of Google's algorithms, but on making visitors happy and allowing a site to grow organically. According to McDougall's rap sessions with Google insider Matt Cutts, this approach is exactly what the search engine giant wants to see, anyway. Thus, you create happy surfers (who become happy newsletter subscribers and happy buyers) AND you get impressive search engine results because Google will be happy, too.
When I first ran into a few references about VEO and started to investigate the report, I thought the whole thing sounded pretty old school. The SEO industry is stuffed with smart people coming up with incredibly creative ways to get results and the VEO strategy seemed almost "quaint" by comparison.
Search engine results are gold to webmasters and that's why people are constantly clamoring for tools to produce those results. The online world is always sprinting toward the next new thing--that new idea that will pump results. Then, Google wises up, effectiveness is diminished and it's on to the next trick. The idea of telling people to jump off of the Google-gaming hamster wheel and to focus on generating a user-friendly site seems like heresy...
According to McDougall, it works.
The nicest thing about being a content writer is the consistency in demand. First, most people hate to write. There's a large segment that will always want to hire a writer. Second, many people cannot write worth a lick. Some of the brightest people I know cannot put two sentences together and they really aren't interested in hitting a remedial grammar class. Third, the web is about information and the preferred method of delivery for information is text. Someone's gotta make that text and demand is always growing.
If the VEO perspective is widely adopted, however, things could get even better for those of us who write for a living. The perspective's insistence on providing quality content to users will require many webmasters who have previously been fine with recycling freebies and not-so-hot text to rething their approach.
As McDougall's message spreads, so should the demand for quality custom content.
Hey, there are a lot of ways for writers to ride on the coattails of more traditional SEO. Article writing for backlinks, articles tweaked to hit desired keyword densities, etc. VEO, however, puts the focus squarely on quality. When you talk about providing quality to users online, that means you are feeding them a steady diet of good content.
My guess is that The VEO Report will be widely read and that a lot of what McDougall has to say will be integrated along with certain aspects of more traditional SEO outlooks. The end result should be an increased focus on supplying visitors with well-crafted material. Content writers will be there to make sure that happens.
