THE GREAT “NEAR ME” CON
By Our Digital Correspondent
IT IS a truth universally acknowledged that a local business in possession of a desperate need for customers must be in want of a “Near Me” tag. Or so the self-styled “SEO Gurus”—those delightful chaps who have populated the darker corners of the internet since the dawn of the dot-com boom—would have you believe.
The latest craze sweeping the nation’s SME boardrooms is the absurd insistence that if one merely sprinkles the phrase “near me” across one’s website like so much digital fairy dust, the Great God Google will instantly catapult the firm to the dizzying heights of the first page. It is, to put it mildly, a load of old cobblers.
Algorithm Nonsense
The premise is simple, if entirely flawed. A business owner, panicked by the thought that their local bakery isn’t appearing for a teenager hunting for a scone while standing outside a bus stop, insists on stuffing this vapid phrase into every meta-tag and header available. One imagines the poor algorithm, tasked with indexing the sum of human knowledge, sighing audibly as it encounters yet another page entitled “Best Plumbers Near Me, Near Me, Near Me (Seriously, Just Near Me)”.
EYE-WITNESS REPORT: Our correspondent recently reviewed the website of a local purveyor of artisan widgets. The site—presumably designed by a sentient toaster—contained more instances of “near me” than sensible information about the widgets themselves. The owner, when queried, suggested it was “the latest tactic for the Google-books”.
The irony, of course, is that the very machine these charlatans are trying to game is far more sophisticated than they realise. Google, in its infinite, data-harvesting wisdom, already knows exactly where a user is located. It doesn’t need to be told, for the five-hundredth time that day, that a plumber is indeed, by definition, “near” to someone looking for a plumber.
Perhaps it is time for these SEO “experts” to consider a radical alternative:
- Actually providing a decent service.
- Building a coherent website.
- Heaven forfend—writing something that a human being might actually enjoy reading.
But then, that would require effort, and we couldn’t have that, could we?
David
[contact-form-block name_label=”Name” email_label=”E-mail” message_label=”Message” header=”false” header_image_id=”null” header_image_size=”50″ header_image_align=”left” header_title=”Get in Touch” header_text=”Leave your message and we’ll get back to you shortly.” button_text=”Send” button_color=”#3d84f6″ button_text_color=”white” align=”undefined” theme=”default” message_rows=”5″][/contact-form-block]