The world of SEO has become a rather dynamic animal. It’s become imperative for both business and individual site owners to stay on top of a fast moving SEO environment. If you don’t, your website could quickly end up on the side of the road.
Continuous Change
Search Engine Optimization professionals need to be aware of the constantly changing rules and guidelines that are put in place by Google. Site owners and blog owners have been surprised in recent months due to Google’s strict policy of not tolerating “followed links” that distort the ranking information. You need to stay abreast of the ever changing SEO space. At least keep your eyes on key developments like: Panda,
Penguin, EMD (Exact Match Domain), and the Disavow Tool. You are aware of these, right? What did penguin target again? Google generally updates their problem solving procedures (algorithms) without warning, but more recently there have been advisories. Take note.
Panda – First released in February of 2011 by Google, with the goal of lowering the rank of thin sites to allow quality sites to rise in search. There have been several updates since, and Google provided
23 attributes of a high-quality site so you’re not out in the dark.
Penguin – Penguin hit in April of 2012, and was aimed to penalize sites using black-hat techniques including: cloaking, keyword stuffing, link schemes, and duplicate content.
EMD (Exact Match Domain) – Google announced in September (2012) that low-quality EMD’s would be reduced in search results. Prior to this, having an exact domain was quite beneficial to that search irregardless if the content inside was garbage. That has change. The algo affected less than 1% of US-English queries.
Disavow Tool – This
tool was released so website owners could remove links pointing to their site which were using techniques outside of Google’s guidelines. Make sure you site is registered at Google’s
Webmaster Tools.
Link Building & Keywords
Link Building is still very important to the overall SEO equation, but the Wild Wild West days have vanished. That’s a good thing, it levels the playing field. The other important way to increase your page ranking is the use of appropriate “keywords”. The key is to be natural in your writing. Going back after you completed your article and sticking a word or phrase in ten different places will be of no value moving forward. Excess keyword insertion may have worked before, but now appropriate and relevant keywords are required. Your post is not a Turkey, stop stuffing keywords.
Choosing an SEO Company
Due to the constant change in search engine optimization in ingenious ways, new updates can cause complications. As a business, you can’t afford to take these hits. Stay away away from link schemes. You need to choose a reputed company that has an established track record to manage your SEO. This will ensure that your company will not face problems when other companies are struggling to regain their Google page ranking. A good SEO company can offer good advice on the number and frequency of links and keywords. If you’re on a tight budget, or have no budget, you should be able to keep pace by following the 3 sites below.
SEOmoz – One of the leading SEO sites out there with a fantastic blog that always provides valuable content. A must for anyone that wants to keep with pace with fast moving SEO world.
Matt Cutts – Matt is head of Google’s Webspam team. Matt provides key information on Google/SEO and has posted 542 articles on the topic. Be sure to follow him on
Google + as well for further insight.
Search Engine Land – Led by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land provides news, insight, and best practices for SEO, SEM, and Social Media.
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Social Sharing Optimization
It even has its own acronym (SSO). Whether you’re a SMB or individual, you have to put yourself out there on the social network train. You need to pickup your activity and engagement levels on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the larger social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon.
You need to dive into Google Plus head first. Google is hitting you over the head to use their social network. You need to listen. A shift is in progress, and traditional SEO could be headed to
hospice sooner than you think.
The Future of SEO
Good search engine optimizers know that the SEO landscape is rapidly changing and is not the same as in previous years. Campaign planning must take into consideration the current realities when launching a new product or service. For successful campaigns, a multi pronged approach is required. This would ensure that the website does not incur penalties or lose visitor traffic .Today most customers like to control the decisions because they are aware of and more critical of marketing techniques.
Now customers need the best options. With customers exercising such control, businesses now have to adopt effective SEO strategies. This requires producing a steady stream of content that appropriately addresses the needs of the customers.
Create solid content and get it in front of your audience using social. Keep building relationships, and don’t stop. The shares, likes, and comments will follow leading to better search results of your content.
Increasing page load speed isn’t just necessary these days for increasing conversion rates. One of its biggest benefactors is now search engine optimization, especially since the creation of Google’s site preview feature. Ask any SEO about the importance of page load speed when it comes to rankings and expect to get a discourse on the subject.
