I hope you have been enjoying the 2018 winter Olympics?
I must admit that I haven’t seen as much as I would have liked, but I have been glued to the hourly round up on BBC 1 each evening and there has been some great action. As with recent Winter Olympics, curling has been getting quite a bit of attention and a lot of air time. Even the legendary Mr.T has declared his love for the sport and launching the #curlingiscoolfool hashtag.
The obsession with curling has got me thinking. I have been known to compare SEO to weird things in the past (you must, surely, have read my ‘Harry Potter and the order of search results‘ post back in…gulp…2005?) and it has struck me that curling and SEO share some similar traits.
As a bit of Friday morning Olympic fun, as the GB women’s team prepares for their semi-final, I wanted to share my top 10 reasons why curling is like SEO:
1) You have to bump your competitors out of the way
Perhaps a bit of an obvious starting point, but curling involves a lot of bumping your competitors out of contention. Just like croquet (another vicious sport), curling is actually quite aggressive and the aim is to shove the competition out of the way and end up with as many of your stones as possible in the house. This is exactly what you are trying to do with SEO – secure as many top rankings as possible at the expense of your competitors.
2) Everybody is talking about it, but nobody knows the rules
Be honest, do you have any idea what is actually going on when you watch curling? We are all talking about it and critiquing the performance of our teams, but do we actually understand the rules? SEO is the same – everyone claims to be an expert, although very few are actually any good at it or have any real experience. There is a lot more to curling that chucking a stone down the ice, just as there is a lot more to SEO than messing around with page titles.
3) It is a team sport
The more I watch curling, the more I appreciate that it is a real team effort. Whilst the skips get all the attention and I suspect you will have heard of Eve Muirhead but may struggle to name any others from the GB women’s team, the truth is that each individual plays a key role in delivering results. SEO is the same – real success only occurs when all the elements (technical SEO / content / on-page optimisation / outreach / PR / social / analytics / etc.) are all singing from the same hymn sheet and working together. There is no ‘I’ in ‘team’, nor is there an ‘I’ in SEO.
4) It is incredibly strategic
I find myself willing the player to launch a pile driver which will smash the competitor’s stones out of the house (or in curling-speak, give it a lot of weight) but the reality is that curling is an incredibly strategic sport. Just as with SEO, you need to play the long game and be prepared to lay down the foundations for future success. That said, did you know that you only have 38mins of thinking time in a curling match? SEO is the same – whilst there is no doubt that it is a long-term strategic exercise, you cannot dilly-dally and you have to react quickly to change and adapt your strategy accordingly…
5) You need to be able to change direction
…which brings me on to my next point. The beauty of the sweepers is that you can change the course of the stone, once it is on its trajectory. This is what all the yelling is about – the expert eye can see where it is going, and how fast, and can command the sweepers to effect change. I think that SEO is the same. Whilst you will ultimately launch the stone (your strategy) in a particular direction, you must be able to constantly assess that trajectory and make changes where requir