I honestly never thought much about SEO (search engine optimization) until one of my students. Grant, decided to take on that topic as his final senior project in our Professional Writing major. He had found the topic interesting during our Social Media Strategy class and decided he wanted to learn more.
He researched deep into the weeds of the topic, wrote his paper, and did a final presentation that allowed him to consolidate the research and give the basics of search engine optimization in a presentation that was understandable to those of us who knew nothing. After graduation, Grant got a job with Visit Indiana, the tourism arm of the State of Indiana — now working as webmaster for their website with its tens of thousands of pages. When it comes to SEO, he knows his stuff.
Search engine optimization basically optimizes your search on the search engines … which means that we want to write our titles and posts and internet copy using key words that searchers are going to put into the search bars. When we do so, there is more chance of the algorithm finding our material and bringing it higher on the results. (That’s a way-too-simplified version and it’s beyond my comprehension, but I do understand working with words to match search words.)
Every semester, Grant graciously returns to my classroom to present that basic introduction to SEO to my students. Many of them have no idea what it is or how to use it.
And, if I’m honest, neither did I.
I had started a YouTube channel a few years ago with nothing more than a few screenshotted videos of me showing writers how to do various tasks in Microsoft Word (creating a title page, creating a Table of Contents, etc.). I recorded one of them because a former employer asked me to show how to do style tagging so they could send the video to clients. I created others to go along with my Pathway to Publication book as part of the manuscript formatting chapter. My little YouTube channel sat fairly quiet, with a few folks clicking on and viewing my videos.
As Grant taught about SEO, he explained the power of using key words in titles and descriptions, thinking of what a searcher on Google is going to ask. He suggested that we plug in some questions, and then scroll down to the “People also ask” section to get an idea of those googled questions, the “How do I …?” questions. I went back and changed the titles and descriptions to my eight videos (I know, I said it was a small channel) to questions or statements someone would actually put into Google.
For instance, “Title pages” became “Creating a title page in Microsoft Word,” and in the description of the video is the question, “How do I add a title page to my manuscript?”
A few months passed without me checking in. Last week, I opened the YouTube page to show it to the students in my Editing class to let them know some of the things we talked about in class are in video form there. One student piped up: “Wow, you have 11,000 views on that one video.”
Whaaaaat?
Just in case you can’t see it:
I honestly didn’t think it was real. I sent the screenshot to Grant, thanking him profusely and asking him also if this could even be real. He checked it for me, and then sent me this screenshot, showing that my video appears as the first video option when he googled “how to create a title page in Microsoft Word.”
“You should be proud of yourself,” he kindly said.
I don’t think I’d say that. I just find it exciting to see that yes, indeed, SEO thinking works. AND that so many folks happened upon my little video and, hopefully, made killer title pages!
I’m basically an influencer now …
Linda Taylor: Teacher, Editor, Publishing Professional 