Search Engine Optimisation: A tool to help people find Macfilos articles

Macfilos aspires to serve the photography community by publishing distinctive content of value to its readers. We post gear reviews, feature articles, travelogues, and breaking news, all richly illustrated with photographs. You’d think with all that great material, connecting to the world of readers would take care of itself. Think again. To make sure the word gets out, we need the help of a tool called search engine optimisation.

Search Engine Optimisation

In today’s on-line world, people track down information by conducting internet searches. Most use Google. Some use other search engines, or perhaps their favourite social media platform. Whichever system they choose, they are in a hurry.

When I conduct a search, I hope to see the most relevant links listed early on the results page. In fact, I rarely plough through more than one page of results.

The question is, how does the Google search engine decide which links are most relevant to me?

On the flip side of the equation are so-called ‘content creators’, such as the crew at Macfilos. How can they organise their content so that search engines choose to present them as a relevant link in response to my search?

Getting this three-part transaction (between internet searcher, search engine, and content creator) working efficiently, requires optimisation.

A person posing the query must choose the optimum search terms. The search engine must track down the sites that are most likely to supply the answer to the query. The content creator must optimise the likelihood that the search engine will consider them the best source of relevant information. 

Welcome to the world of SEO

Search engine optimisation is big business. One source estimated the value of the SEO industry could exceed $122 billion in the next five years. Why is it such a big deal? Because it helps to create an optimised cyber-ecosystem where sellers can connect efficiently with buyers. 

More generally, SEO enables content creators to connect efficiently with people who are looking for that content.

So, what exactly does search engine optimisation entail? How does an internet site organise its material so that search engines are most likely to find it?

We assess the likelihood that a given Macfilos article will be found and read using a WordPress plug-in application called Yoast. This evaluates each article using a specific set of guidelines, providing feedback via a ‘traffic light’ framework: red, amber, green.

SEO Score: increasing the likelihood that an article will be found

Here are the factors governing whether an article is optimised for appearance in an internet search. They are guidelines rather than hard and fast requirements. But, if this is what the experts advise, why not follow them?

Select a ‘key phrase’ which reflects the subject of the article. Suppose the article is a review of a specific lens. Then the name of the lens would be a good choice for the key phrase. Because the key phrase will appear several times in the article (see below), it should be one that bears repeating, without being tedious.

Use the key phrase throughout the article. If the body of the article contains twelve hundred words, it’s a good idea to sprinkle the key phrase through the article five or six times. Ideally, it is distributed evenly. Therefore, working it in discreetly is the name of the game.

Use the key phrase in subheadings. As we will see below, use of subheadings has multiple benefits. We therefore try to incorporate the key phrase in subheadings. The more long-winded the key phrase, the more challenging this becomes.

Use the key phrase in the title that will be displayed on a search results page. This makes it easier for people to understand what the linked article is about, and recognise whether it might be relevant to their search. Scanning a list of Google hits takes effort, and so a well-constructed ‘SEO title’ facilitates prioritising that hit list.

Use the key phrase in the capsule description displayed on a search results page. This is the blurb below the title in a search result entry. It provides additional confirmation that the link is relevant. It is longer than the article title, and so can convey additional information about the article.

Links and images

Include internal links. This provides a way for people to find related material that might have been published previously on the site. It might not have been what they were looking for originally, but it is nevertheless of interest. It is a bit like browsing the stacks in a library and chancing upon an interesting book you had never heard of.

Include external links. This allows readers to see more specific information, for example about people or places that might be relevant to their original search. Links to reference material, such as Wikipedia, can provide valuable information beyond what was included in the article itself.

Include images. This makes articles much more appealing and informative, and is an area where Macfilos articles shine. We richly illustrate our articles with photographs. You could even say that what we post are photo-essays, in which the photographs and text are completely integrated.

Readability Score: another ingredient in search engine optimisation

Publishing articles that people enjoy reading is almost as important as helping them find the articles in the first place. Here are the guidelines we pay close attention to.

Use the active voice. Every book on how to write clearly emphasises the importance of using the active rather than passive voice. It is more efficient, more animated, and more engaging.

Writers are often tempted to adopt the passive voice when dealing with technical subjects, such as photography. It seems more objective and authoritative. But, too much of it and the text becomes stuffy and wordy. So, instead of saying: ‘A telephoto lens allows one to capture images of distant objects’, why not say ‘I can capture images of distant objects using a telephoto lens’? It is more direct and uses fewer words.

The Yoast algorithm recommends writers use the passive voice in no more than 10% of their sentences.

Use short sentences. This guidance might sound as if the aim is to ‘dumb down’ the writing. It is true that some of the most celebrated novelists are renowned for their elegant, complex sentences, bristling with sub-clauses. By way of information, that previous sentence used twenty words.

What we need to bear in mind is that we are publishing a blog, not a novel. Short sentences make articles more punchy, and easier to digest. Yoast recommends having no more than 25% of sentences in an article contain more than twenty words.

A few works by a short sentence advocate

More guidelines for increasing readability

Keep paragraphs short. I was taught in school that a paragraph is meant to encompass a single topic or idea. It would therefore usually comprise the number of sentences required to explain that idea coherently. In writing a blog, which will be read on an electronic device, large blocks of text are difficult to digest. They also make the blog page less appealing visually. Therefore, extensive use of white space, between short paragraphs, is encouraged. We also need to consider the varied ways in which readers will see the results — on smartphone, tablet or 32in computer screen. Long paragraphs, therefore, can become ridiculously long in certain circumstances. This is the longest paragraph in the article, with ten sentences. I left it this way to illustrate the point. Usually, I would have started a new paragraph after ‘Therefore’.

Use variety in sentences. I consider myself a reasonably competent writer. I have worked hard to wean myself from over-use of the passive voice. As tempting as it might have been to start this sentence with another ‘I’, I managed to avoid that pitfall. One of the challenges of using the active voice is having too many sentences starting just that way.

Insufficient variety in sentences makes for poor writing and painful reading.

The power of subheadings

Use subheadings. Subheadings play an extremely useful role in blog posts. They guide the reader, informing them that the writer is moving on to a new topic. They break up otherwise monolithic blocks of text. And they provide an opportunity to slip in puns, wisecracks, and dad jokes.

Economist subscribers will know that ‘the witty subheading’ is an intrinsic element of their house style.

Occasionally, they are there purely for cosmetic reasons, to break up the text. As mentioned above, judiciously including the key phrase in subheadings can both help the reader and improve SEO score.

Avoid complex words. This might also seem like a drive to the lowest common denominator, but is consistent with most style guides. It would not put me off using a word like ‘denominator’ in a sentence. The general idea is to use common, easily-understood words as much as possible.

As a photography blog, Macfilos articles inevitably contain uncommon technical terms. Aperture, depth-of-field, and apochromatic come to mind. Sometimes, therefore, an article might be penalised for over-use of complex words. So be it!

Putting it all together

You might have twigged that the article you have been reading has been written with these guidelines in mind. It has two ‘green lights’, for SEO score and readability. Can you guess what key phrase I chose?

The article met all the guidelines for SEO, and did a pretty good job on the guidelines for readability. Around 12% of the sentences use passive voice.

Articles we receive from our contributors rarely look like this first time around. Our contributors are great photographers, but not necessarily professional blog authors. The editorial team try to preserve as much original content as possible, while aligning them with the guidelines above. Editing with search engine optimisation in mind is great fun.

It also seems to work. As you might have read in our recent review of 2023, we have seen a fifty percent increase in Macfilos readership over the last year.

Having read this far, we hope you now have a better idea of what makes for a successful blog post. And, at the risk of repeating ourselves, it’s what makes for a successful blog post, not a successful novel.

So, what does success look like for a blog post? It is a blog that will be found and read by someone looking for the information, insight, advice, or perspective it contains. That’s a 20-word sentence.

By the way, the key phrase I chose was ‘search engine optimisation’. See how I snuck that in one more time…

Read our review of 2023 at Macfilos

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