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I have not been working in the realm of search engine optimisation (SEO) copywriting for too long – it was only a few months ago in fact that I successfully managed to turn an internship into a job offer. A couple of weeks after the confirmation of my new found employment I treated myself to my first ever smart phone (a HTC Desire) for which I downloaded the popular Angry Birds game app by Rovio.

An addiction to the game mixed with my slowly developing knowledge of how to succeed within SEO meant that I started to see similarities between SEO and catapulting birds at block structures and green piggies.

After reading this, you will either understand how I made the connection or think that I am completely off my trolley! Here goes…

Just like spotting the weaknesses in the structures guarding the oinking pigs in AB, you have to locate the weaknesses in your client’s current SEO strategy or you’ll never beat your ranking competitors (who I like to think of as the in game green pigs!)

Sometimes the task of spotting these weaknesses can seem impossible and so you have to look to the work of your competitors – what are they doing that you are not? Why do particular competitors continually beat you to the top of SERPS? In regards to Angry Birds, I have sometimes found myself turning to YouTube for methods to beat those levels or achieve a 3 star rating which seems impossible.

“WTF (is the deal with this level)!?” is what I’ll often find myself thinking and this is the way Google’s mysterious algorithm leaves SEO engineers feeling!

With both SEO and AB, sometimes you just need a little luck on your side. Those obstacles will collapse for reasons unbeknown to you but you’ll be happy to ride the wave of success regardless anyway!

I like to think of the various types of birds in the game as different methods for improving the Google positions of clients. For example, the normal red birds are representative of the “do nothing and hope for the best” method adopted by so many websites out there (giving the poorest results) and the blue birds (which split into three) represent link building efforts.

In Angry Birds, sometimes part of a structure just needs a good blowing up to get the job done. In SEO, sometimes “blowing up” (read as; redesigning) a website is very necessary before any other parts of a strategy come into play!

The three star rating in AB is a little like SEO Page Rank – a system that shows that your efforts can always be improved!

Kat Cole is an SEO copywriter with a love of gigs and festivals and she thinks that England will never get over the taboo of bidets! To hear more from Kat, you can follow her on Twitter (@DeadBoomerang)