Explaining SEO to My Grandma, Part II
My grandmother is 89 years old. She just may be the only person left in America with a rotary phone (which she’s been renting from the phone company for 89¢ a week since 1960), and I’m pretty sure the closest she’s come to operating an actual computer is the pay-at-the-pump system at the gas station. Needless to say, she’s a little behind on technology. Not that that’s a problem; anyone born before television was invented has a right to think a “smart phone” is a telephone with a sass mouth. It does, however, make trying to explain my job to her a bit difficult.
And now, the thrilling conclusion of “Explaining SEO to My Grandma.”
Grandma: So if I want to buy wool socks, I write “wool socks” on the Google and it tells me to go to Penney’s?
Me: Yeah, but it will show you a bunch of other places that sell wool socks, too. So you can find the best socks and the best prices and whatever else you’re looking for.
Grandma: But I already know that Penney’s sell socks. Why would I waste time asking a Google?
Me: Uh… well, maybe you’re looking for something that’s harder to find than socks, then. I worked on one website for a company that makes custom touch screen keypads and stuff, like to put in tractors or manufacturing machines. Search engines will find a whole bunch of different websites that sell those, so we try to make it so our client’s website shows up first.
Grandma: And a search engine is a Google?
Me: Yeah. It’s the other way around, though. Google is a search engine. There are lots of different search engines. But Google’s the most famous one, I guess.
Grandma: Okay… So you tell the Google search engine to put your websites that you made first on the list?
Me: Kind of. I don’t actually make the websites, though. I mostly just do the writing for the actual words that show up on the screen. My company has a team of people who do most of the SEO research and stuff. I just write so the words sound nice. And we have a big team of developers and designers who actually make the websites. They’re super-smart with really computery computer stuff.
Grandma: Oh…
Me: thinking: Pleasedon’taskwhatdevelopersdo! Pleasedon’taskwhatdevelopersdo! Pleasedon’taskwhatdevelopersdo!
Grandma: So you just write the Google and tell them to make your website first?
Me: thinking: Whew! Then, speaking, Well, you can’t really tell search engines what to do, but you can sort of suggest that your website should go first. That’s why we use keywords and stuff. We try to put a lot of references on the website to the specific words that people will be searching for to find whatever the website is shucking.
Grandma: So if I’m writing a Google for wool socks, you make your website say it has wool socks?
Me: Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Or if the site sells hand-knitted wool socks, we’ll have it say “hand-knitted wool socks.” Or if they use some fancy kind of wool from a llama or whatever, it’ll say “fancy llama wool wool socks.” That kind of thing.
Grandma: But how does the Google know how to find the websites it finds?
Me: They use a specially-created algorithm which, drawing from over two-hundred different indicators, computes a recursive score for the site, based on a weighted analyses of assumed relevance and importance of the website itself.*
Grandma: brief blank stare, then Oh… Well, that sounds nice. Would you like some hot cocoa?
Me: I would love some, Grandma.
THE END
* Something like that, anyway.
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Nice article. But, my mother still has rotary dial phones in her house. The odd thing is, she also has a wireless network…
Comment by Greg — February 10, 2011 @ 10:22 am
This cracked me-up Lee! My grandma has a rotary phone in the kitchen too that she has been renting from the phone company for as long as your grandma. I would have thrown it away and just bought one at Target, but it is hard-wired in the wall. I finally broke down and signed her up for high-speed internet so she can check her AOL e-mail without using dial-up.
Comment by Troy — November 17, 2011 @ 8:50 am