The “text, image, video” trio we have been talking about for years is now something Google understands with real skill. That ability has pushed the content on our sites into a new stage. It shows up in a few different ways, and it opens a new dimension in what you personally need to be able to do.
Until now, as we have said before, the “engineering” team handled technical SEO and the writing teams handled on-page, in separate lanes. After this shift, the people working on on-page SEO need a new skill. And that skill looks like being video.
Writers who produce plain text alone are unlikely to survive the coming system. The reason; AI carries information to users effortlessly. So under “multimodal SEO” writers need to add one more thing to what they can do, and that is: shooting video
Why Video
Whether we are presenting a product or a service on our sites, or offering a solution to a problem, showing it visually means producing value for our visitors either way. And that value will always be more concrete on video.
Some 30 to 35 years ago Marc Andreessen asked a question: why are we not using images on websites? The piece we wrote on the history of IMG was about how wild the idea of putting an image on a web page was at the time. The internet has come a long way since, and 5G is here. Fast connections give you the freedom to put more data in front of people. Rather than staying stuck in the past, we have to keep up with the conditions of what is coming.
The Türk SEM Writer List Is a Wide One
Our archive of writers is one of the widest in Turkey. For a writer, Türk SEM is the final stop. It is a school for content that gets read and works, and more importantly it is a place where you learn to keep up with the technologies coming next. Every page we create for the clients we serve under SEO gets a high degree of care. For a writer, working with Türk SEM means working on serious jobs. When we pick writers, for instance, someone writing for a travel agency needs a four year tourism degree, and someone writing health content needs a health degree. We train our writers right down to how to follow the latest academic papers in that sector.
Now this subject moves into a new phase, and we at Türk SEM, and you in your own work, have to take a position on it. From this point on it makes no sense for our writers to stay inside pure text.
- Pick up a microphone and tell your subject in your own voice on a podcast.
- Pick up a camera and make the thing you are describing concrete by putting it on video.
- Photograph it stage by stage
This new challenge may look like hard work, but it is simply the reality. For a better internet we have to use every instrument we have.
Google Sees, and Understands
Google is now “more human”
Google makes sense of videos and images the way a person does. Take explaining how to tie a shoelace;
20 years ago it was worth something in text,
15 years ago an image made the difference,
10 years ago video became the standard.
Today a synchronized combination of all three is required.
Google understands videos, images and what a piece of content is trying to say, and it does it rather well.
Google can analyze at which second of the video the lace is knotted, from which angle the image was shot, and how accurately the text supports that whole process.
As things stand: if all you produce is flat, keyword focused text, you are standing where the people who argued against Marc Andreessen 35 years ago stood. The way to exist, inside Türk SEM or on your own projects, runs through putting your multimodal abilities to work. This road looks like hard work, and it is the only currency the future of the internet will accept.
And do not think of this as video alone; you can enrich content with a good many other elements. Think, research, and make your content better than it is. That is when you become a writer people ask for.
A New Area of Work in On-Page SEO
Hundreds of writers apply to us through the writer application every year, and when a writer’s expertise crosses with a partner’s sector we talk and start working. In those replies we will now also be checking whether they can shoot video.
Along with all this we revised the questions on the writer application screen and started asking about experience with video production as well.
In Short
Change is coming fast and AI is threatening a significant share of what we do. Which is why we have to develop ourselves not only across, but downward into depth. Producing video may sit in a different skill area for a writer, but today it has become one of the basic requirements for getting people to visit the content on our sites.
At Türk SEM we will keep passing on what we learn as we restructure the company for this new order. We plan to keep writing pieces that help our writer colleagues through the same change.
