In celebration of a certain Mr Potter’s upcoming birthday we thought we would spill our cauldron of magical SEO secrets.
In case you didn’t know (I’m not sure why you would) Harry Potter’s birthday is on the 31st of July and according to his date of birth he’ll be turning 42.
We don’t really think that Bellatrix can call him “itty bitty baby potter” at 42.
(Warning: the next line contains a SPOILER for a film that came out in 2009)
Helena Bonham Carter, if you’re reading this we forgive you for killing Sirius Black.
We’re hopeful that Harry hasn’t traded in his magical items for an overpriced convertible in a midlife crisis.
We couldn’t track down Mr Potter for an interview but we’d like to think that he’s still using magic on the daily.
We’re taking this opportunity to talk about the mystical and mysterious world of SEO – the closest thing to magic we’ll ever have.
More Blogs From DRPT:
Eurovision 2022: An SEO Specialist’s Secret To Winning
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Everything Was Better In The 90s, Or Was It…?
The Magical Beasts Of SEO
Trolls
There’s a troll in the dungeon!
The internet is a bit like Hogwarts’ toilets, occasionally home to trolls.
Trolls are arguably more dangerous and cruel in the real world than the fantasy world of Harry Potter.
They can be inconvenient, vicious and downright frustrating.
Trolls aren’t quite the big eared ugly monsters that they are in Hogwarts. In fact they’re people sitting behind computer screens causing chaos.
Trolls can disrupt your comment section and cause spam traffic to flood your webpage making your analytics inaccurate and ineffective.
Dementors
Once the resident guards of Azkaban, dementors consume the souls of the living slowly.
Dementors consume the victim’s memories and feelings.
Toxic backlinks are the dementors of the world wide web. They sap the life out of your website and leave it soulless.
These backlinks damage your site’s reputation and make it seem unreliable when being reviewed by search engines like Google.
There’s not an easy fix like the patronus charm to protect against these backlinks.
The only way to deal with these virtual dementors is to contact the owner of the spam site that is backlinking to your site.
If they refuse to take this down you can take matters further but it is a lengthy and difficult process.
House Elves
Let’s talk about Dobby, one of the most beloved characters in the Potterverse.
Dobby is probably the most famous of all of the house elves in the Harry Potter franchise.
House elves were subservient creatures that performed menial tasks for their wizarding masters.
We use the term menial loosely of course, sometimes you need a house elf to carry out a task you couldn’t do yourself.
It does pose the question, if wizards can use magic to clean, cook and fold clothes why would they enslave a whole race of house elves?
Anyhow, house elves can be useful for freeing up your time. While they’re carrying out your housework, you can be saving the world from a certain noseless psychopath.
Direct response can and will be your SEO house elves, tackling tasks so you can use your time more effectively.
A quick disclaimer, as kind as it would be, the DRPT SEO team do not need freeing and we will not be accepting socks now or in the near future.
Phoenixes
As Dumbledore once said:
“Fascinating creatures, phoenixes. They can carry immensely heavy loads, their tears have healing powers, and they make highly faithful pets.”
The phoenix rises from the ashes to be reborn, boasting red and golden plumage.
The one talent that sets it apart from an ordinary magical bird, is its talent for rebirth.
Think of this like your webpage’s SEO and its activity. Even if you neglect your page everything’s not lost.
It’s true that you need to post regular content to stay relevant, however, you can rebuild your web presence.
It’s not quite as fast as ol’ Fawkes’ resurrection from the ashes but it can still be done.
What Does The Sorting Hat Think?
Do you know which house you’d be in?
Ravenclaw – Intelligent with a sharp wit.
It takes the intelligence of a Ravenclaw to create a solid marketing plan, knowing who is your perfect audience and how to target them.
Home to the likes of the inquisitive Luna Lovegood.
A marketing plan involves creating a strategy that capitalises on the benefits of your services.
Once you’ve identified the important parts of your products that you want to focus on, it’s time to work out how you can create promotional posts, blogs and information geared towards a hypothetical “perfect audience”.
Don’t jump straight into content creation when you haven’t got a specific direction in mind.
Gryffindor – Proud and Brave
Being humble doesn’t pay when it comes to content creation. A Gryffindor would make sure that their original content is being produced regularly.
Unique content is one way to show how proud of your product or service you are. Gryffindor is the house of none other than Harry Potter, and his two companions Ron Wesley and Hermoine Granger.
Giving main character energy, original blog content will also allow search engines like Google to categorise your web page as active and impressive.
Ranking high is also something to be proud of. It’s no easy feat to reach the higher rankings in a search engine’s listings.
Hufflepuff – Empathetic and Trustworthy
House Hufflepuff isn’t as flashy as the others but does represent important qualities that you’ll need when it comes to your online presence.
Just don’t follow down the road that Cedric Diggory did.
Authoritativeness and trustworthiness are two of the most important words you want associated with your web page.
To showcase your expertise and to bring in your “ideal” audience it is vital that you express authority and trustworthiness through your content.
Being committed to maintaining your SEO through rain or shine is something that a Hufflepuff would do with great pleasure.
Slytherin – Cunning and Ambitious
There’s nothing wrong with being ambitious, Slytherins have a bad reputation but they’re not all bad!
By that we mean they’re not all like Draco Malfoy.
With a little bit of cunning and a large helping of ambitiousness you can do a lot with your web page.
SEO is all about adapting and using cunning to keep up with search engines’ ever changing algorithms.
The ever changing landscape of SEO and web marketing requires your plan to weave and roll with the punches in an almost snake-like manner.
It also takes a cunning edge like those attributed to Slytherins to be able to adapt your plan to your target audience.
Whatever house you identify with, all of the aspects that they represent are important when approaching your online presence.
Back To School
Unlike boring normal school, Hogwarts offers a whole range of exciting subjects to study. Sorry Mathematics I’d rather be pulling a mandrake out of a pot or be making a polyjuice potion.
I know I wouldn’t be able to pick a favourite class with the variety that the magical highschool offers.
So what exactly is on the agenda?
Herbology
Led by the wonderful Miriam Margolyes, oh erm we mean Professor Sprout. This magical class studies plants, herbs and other weird things that come out of the ground.
Just make sure you’ve got your earmuffs on and have a strong stomach so you don’t pass out like Neville Longbottom.
Herbology is a great metaphor for tending to your SEO.
Content should be kept evergreen, constantly updated and expanded upon to let Google (and other search engines) know that you haven’t forgotten about it.
Defense against the dark arts
An important part of the wizarding curriculum, defending against the most sinister forms of magic.
The internet presents its own forms of Boggarts, your deepest fears lurking behind every corner.
Supposedly the position of defense against the dark arts professor was jinxed by Tom Riddle after he was refused the role. No teacher held the role for more than a year until Riddle’s curse was broken.
A whole host of professors including Quirinus Quirrell, Gilderoy Lockhart, Remus Lupin, “Mad-Eye Moody”, Dolores Umbridge and Severus Snape have held the title.
If defense against the dark arts has taught us anything, apart from the fact there’s a high turnover at Hogwarts, is that you can defend against evil.
We can use this kind of thinking with SEO and black hat tactics. Steer clear and learn how you can defend your webpage against these black hat methods.
Potions
What good would a wizard or witch be if they didn’t use a cauldron to brew some mystical potions.
The perfect combination of ingredients mixed in just the right way creates the ideal potion.
Easy to try but hard to master, potions can be used for a large range of things including infatuation and truth serums.
Your webpage acts like a potion, the wrong combination of ingredients mixed incorrectly can cause havoc and even leave you with a 404 error.
Transfiguration
Favoured by professor Minerva McGonagall, transfiguration is one of the more dangerous classes taught at the world’s number 1 magic school.
Transfiguration is the practice of changing the physical attributes of an object, person or animal.
We wouldn’t be suggesting that you try to turn anyone into a cat or something more sinister, but think about your webpage like a class given by Maggie Smith herself.
Transfigure your site from being a bland page into one with abundant interesting content.
It’s A Kind Of Magic
SEO might seem like magic but it’s certainly doable and is vital for your business if you’re wanting to maximise how much you’re benefiting from the internet.
Whatever your Hogwarts house or your favourite class, SEO is accessible for everyone and you should be taking advantage of it.
If you need help getting started or writing magical SEO content don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.
Johnathan Elliott
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