The Apple Picking Story Unpicked

Did you work out what it was all about? In the previous post we looked at the story of five apple pickers and their fortunes. The entire story is a great metaphor for the SEO process. How?

The apple pickers are website owners. The apple trees are keywords and the apples are website visitors.

Remember the first guy in the story? He just sat there under the tree and waited. No prizes for guessing what kind of website owner he is supposed to be. That's right, the lazy one. He just sits there and waits for visitors. We know that doesn't work in the world of online commerce.

The second apple picker only chose to pick apples from the trees that looked healthy. This is the website owner who optimizes a page with words that they think are going to grab visitors. But they haven't really done their homework, and their keywords don't do much business because they aren't the phrases that people are really using to search.

The third apple picker who checked out all the trees and chose the one with the most fruit he could reach is like the owner who builds a site, does excellent research, and optimizes the site for good, relevant keywords that his site is well placed for. They are not the most popular words in his area of expertise but with good optimization of the on-page variety he is able to get his site somewhere near the top 10 search results and generate sales or leads.

The fourth apple picker who looked at all the trees, chose the one with the most fruit she could reach, and then built a ladder to get at them is like the site owner who works hard at keyword research, makes a real effort at optimizing his site, and begins building strong links to his site. He not only receives better results at an early stage, but his traffic and sales increase sharply as the number of links grows and he is then able to work on more competitive keywords (or for the purposes of our story, bigger trees).

Finally, the fifth apple picker who looked at all the trees that were there in the valley, then built a ladder, and then took the notes about the number of apples from each tree is like the website owner who does keyword research, content optimization, strong link building, and tracks his rankings with ranking reports and then his site traffic with good analytics. He is able to build a website that competes for the best phrases and can reflect and adapt as his field and search marketing trends change.