He was Wales’ answer to Elvis Presley. He came from Ely in Cardiff, wore denim, had jet black hair and his armies of female fans called him ‘Shaky’. He is of course, Shakin’ Stevens, the legend.
As well as having hits with singles such as ‘Green Door’, ‘This Ole House’ and ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ (you might know it better as Snow Is Falling) Shaky also has some very wise words on the subject of SEO.
No, we haven’t taken leave of our senses. If you analyse the lyrics to his classic ‘This Ole House’ you’ll see that the song isn’t actually about a house at all, it’s about a website. We should warn you that we may have altered the lyrics ever so slightly, just to back up the point we’re trying to make.
Here is the opening verse and chorus for Shakin’ Stevens ‘This Ole Site’
This old site once rang with visitors
This old site saw many hits
Now it trembles in the darkness
When the spiders visit it
Ain’t gonna need this site no longer
Ain’t gonna need this site no more
Ain’t got time to fix the keywords
Ain’t got time to fix the door (way pages)
Ain’t got time to increase the backlinks
Nor to mend the landing pages
Ain’t gonna need this site no longer
It’s not been updated for absolutely ages
There you have it; Shaky is clearly singing about a website – a website that is in much need of SEO. Let’s have a look at what he means in more detail.
The opening verse for example:
This old site once rang with visitors
This old site saw many hits
Now it trembles in the darkness
When the spiders visit it
This verse talks about a website that used to be successful and receive a lot of traffic. It used to generate a lot of sales and business for the company, but sadly it no longer performs in the search engines at all. Clearly something has gone wrong.
Ain’t gonna need this site no longer
Ain’t gonna need this site no more
Here we see that Shaky is singing about how the website owner has given up on the website and believes it is no longer required. This is of course a mistake on the website owner’s part, as if the site was successful once it could be again.
Ain’t got time to fix the keywords
Ain’t got time to fix the door (way pages)
Now Shaky is getting to the nub of the problem. The website owner just doesn’t have the time to work on the website. Obviously a poor SEO company has worked on it in the past, adding doorway pages and stuffing the site with keywords, and this is the reason that the website is no longer successful. This could easily be fixed.
Ain’t got time to increase the backlinks
Nor to mend the landing pages
This shows that the site owner understands what is wrong with his website, but he believes it is not worth it. However, if the site was successful once (and with black hat SEO) it could be again, but this time it could dominate its industry. By the correct use of content the website could become an authority and generate more traffic and sales than it ever did before.
Ain’t gonna need this site no longer
It’s not been updated for absolutely ages
This is really the problem isn’t it? The website hasn’t been updated for ages. We all know that Google favours websites that have quality, unique content – and websites that are updated regularly will rank better than those that aren’t.
All this website needs is a quality SEO campaign and some care and attention spent on it. Shakin’ Stevens knows this, which is why he released this chart topping song way back in 1981, even before search engine optimisation, and Google, even existed.
Shaky was a pioneer of the SEO industry. Listen to him, he talks sense.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5YF9zyTQwE]
- What are the nuts and bolts of digital marketing? - September 10, 2020
- What is Google RankBrain and how do you use it? - September 9, 2020
- Three dos (and three don’ts) of writing great content - September 4, 2020
