Unfortunately SEO is Not as Easy as it Once Was. Unfortunately? Or Fortunately?

It is many people’s belief (including many SEO companies) that in order to get a website ranking well in Google, they need to ensure that when Google looks at that site, it is made absolutely clear what that sites’ owner/s want it to rank for. In other words, if you want the site to rank well for ‘Precision Engineering companies’, then you better repeat that phrase in as many places as possible – in the pages themselves and in the background of the site – you may hear people talking about getting keywords into the meta descriptions, title tags, H1 headers etc… More learned SEO professionals may talk of demonstrating to Google that your site is popular and useful, by engineering as many ‘links’ from other sites as possible – this often involves directory submissions, forum comments, guest blog post and many other areas.

But think about what Google want to do. They are commercial business, and they gain revenue from the adverts near the top and down the right hand side of their SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages). The reason businesses choose to advertise with Google is because that’s where the people are looking. If that goes away then Google would be in trouble, they are not showing any signs of being in trouble because they give their customers what they want – great search results, so they keep coming back.

Now the chances are that you are a Google customer and as such, if you want to find a product or service like ‘Precision Engineering Companies’, are you getting what you want by Google serving up the websites who have written ‘Precision Engineering Companies’ in as many places as possible on their site? or even have worked out the best ‘keyword density’ and the minute detail of how much importance Google places on Title tags vs meta descriptions etc. etc.? Would you not be better served, by Google really working out which sites are the most interesting, content rich and HELPFUL to their customers?

This is why Google are constantly updating and refining their algorithm which analyses how their customers’ search queries can be answered in the optimum way.

It is true that more thought than ever needs to go into getting results in Google, but I think any business that truly cares about their customers should see this as good news. If you do your SEO right, you will get the right traffic, you won’t need to ‘fool’ Google, and your customers will waste less time looking at the wrong websites and trawling through to find the right bit on the website/s they look at.

If you can demonstrate to Google that you are going to HELP their customers, then it makes sense for them to rank you well.

So, you need to show that you are trustworthy, knowledgeable, and relevant, a font of useful information, and a solution to the problem of the searcher. You need to understand that Google recognise their customers’ are using social media in a big way, and that the way they search the internet has evolved – did you know that 70% of searches are now ‘long tail’?, so they might search for ‘digital camera’, but they are also likely to search something like ‘best digital camera for shooting wildlife’ or ‘which manufacturer produces the best digital cameras for everyday use?’.  Your SEO strategy should therefore take all of this into account.

Optimisation and link building are still vital, but there is more involved now, such as how you are using social media, the authority of the links, the ‘long tail key phrases’, and importantly the quality and content of your website.

Article by Andrew Leamon