For the past two decades, Google has closely guarded the secret formula by which websites are searched, categorized, and served up to internet users looking for information. Through that time, organizations understandably have tried to crack the Google search ranking code to capitalize on greater exposure. The name of the game became search engine optimization, or SEO.
But if your organization is still trying to crack the code, it’s time to stop.
SEO hasn’t become unimportant. Instead, the search engine itself has become so intuitive that SEO is no longer a “thing” unto itself.
Today’s SEO can be boiled down to subcategories under proper site construction and solid content marketing.
And—with perhaps one small exception—that’s it.
If you write great content for your site—content that’s relevant for your audience—and if you do some technical things right and have a structured, well-organized site, that’s really the best form of SEO.
Paul DeLeeuw, Interactive Manager for ddm
How web searching grew up
Since the mid 90s, organizations have employed tricks and tips to gain exposure and get clicks via search engines. And for a lot of years, it worked. Young search engines—and even Google in its infancy—didn’t have the algorithms needed to distinguish a true, quality web resource from a site that was built to emulate a true, quality web resource.
Carefully placed keywords in the code of your site, along with numerous links to and from outside sources, and your organization could garner an unnatural level of visibility.
“You were either trying to encourage the machine to bubble your site to the top, or you were trying to trick the machine into bubbling your site to the top,” says DeLeeuw. “Today, you can still do that to some extent, and in the short-term you can probably boost your numbers. But in the medium- and long-term? Well…”
However you feel about Google search, DeLeeuw cautions that it’s become mostly untrickable. And Google’s improving it further by the day, reportedly using hundreds of factors to get a true sense of the best content available to present to searchers.
Yes, you can track and trick the system based on what we know about these factors. Some marketing companies still beg clients to have them open that can of worms.
But in 99 percent of cases, it’s not going to be worth it.
Since everything you need to do comes from either site quality or content creation, let’s take a look at the “SEO musts” for each.
Site build quality
To set the stage for great content, you’ve got to have a great canvas for that content. Call it the “Triple S” approach.
Structure
Coding is fundamental. Your site does need the right keywords within its site code. Developers will talk about “tags” within the site and ensuring each page in your site has the right tags and the right information within those tags.
It’s also important that your site is structurally organized. Indicators are that Google will drop you in the rankings if your site has structural flaws, broken links, missing pages, or too much down time.
Speed
How fast does your site load? Google has admitted for the past dozen years that page speed is a factor in search rankings. If your site is a half-second slower than that of your competitor, it could make a difference.
Security
When you load your webpage, does it take you to an address that begins with “http://” or “https://?” Google has made clear it will prioritize secure pages.
Content creation
With the site fundamentals established, it’s time to roll with great content. These rules for quality SEO dovetail with a solid content marketing strategy:
1. Keep pace with your industry.
The answer to the question, “How much content do I need?” is going to rely on how much and how quickly others in your marketspace put out content. Google is smart enough to know that, when someone searches for an item you sell, you’re not going to be competing with every site in the world using the same words. If you sell custom screen-printed T-shirts, you’re not going to compete with every apparel outlet. Know your niche well and keep pace—or keep ahead of—your competitors when it comes to content creation.
Blogs and even social media that are tied into your website can boost the reputation and relevance of your site in the eyes of Google.
2. Originality counts.
Google does pick up on copied, rewritten, and machine-generated content. The practice of using mimicked content is called “content spinning,” and it’s increasingly being detected. Copywriters can rejoice in that thoughtful, human-created content counts for a lot here. As much as we love automated marketing, it’s not yet a great idea for website content creation from a search ranking perspective.
3. Words do matter.
It used to be that you could pack keywords into certain code within your site. What’s still important are the words and phrases you use in relation to what’s being searched for. There are plenty of tools for selecting the right keywords and phrases, and it’s worth taking the time to sew these elements into your content naturally, and with regularity.
It’s also worth noting that you’re going to have a different type of SEO challenge with every type of product or service you’re marketing. A powerful, unique brand can be its own keyword. A niche product or service, such as “fabricated anchor bolts” is relatively easy to plan around. But the more general your wording—“mortgage refinancing,” for example—the more thought you’ll require to stand out.
4. Links matter, too—both good and bad.
Much of gaming the system came from establishing links to as many different sites as possible. Now, it’s better to have fewer, high-quality links than to have more links to questionable sources. For example, if traffic is coming to your site from an industry trade publication, your ranking will increase. But if a link to your site is found on a site meant to inflate links—often referred to as “link farms”—Google might actually knock you down in site rankings. In fact, Google has even gone so far as to count such links as a violation of its webmaster guidelines.
While the worlds of pay-per-click advertising and organic search results are theoretically separated, buying pay-per-click advertisements also seem to have a positive, indirect impact on search rankings.
One possible exception
If any one thing can be seen as strictly in the camp of SEO, it’s actually conversing with the search engines to ensure your site is properly recognized. Webmasters can go directly to Google to register their site and submit information. And if you revisit any aspect of your site or content creation, you can request that Google recrawl your site for search rankings.
Will Google find your site eventually? Sure. But this is a step that can’t hurt, but could speed things up, especially if your site is brand new.