When it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization), experienced marketers understand that change happens mainly due to the fact that the web is constantly changing. Because things are continuously evolving, it forces us to both rethink our strategy, as well as analyze our efforts with regards to website architecture and other technologies. With that being said, this chan
ge also directly affects the rules of SEO, which encompasses three interwoven components:
Infrastructure: Looking at the nuts and bolts of SEO at the core, there’s really no point in optimizing a website to contain your content if search engine spiders and other data crawlers can’t find it. The need for enhanced accessibility will advance tremendously as technology vendors come to the realization that sales will decline if processes and/or services aren’t more search engine friendly. SEO specialists tend to look at a site’s infrastructure first and foremost because 9 times out of 10 a website’s architecture is not up to date to reflect our target search terms (or Keywords). A site that doesn’t utilize keywords properly within these crucial components that Google uses to define or gauge relevance and expert authority for a website’s offerings, will simply not rank on the search engine indexes.
Popularity: Links, commonly referred to as ‘Back-links’, Inbound links, one-way links, or whatever you want to call them have factored into search engine algorithms BIG TIME in recent years. This has prompted or spawned an entirely new breed of opportunistic paid linking methods including link farming (or link-filled pages).
More than ever it seems that Social Media has entered into our lives and has impacted both our personal and professional lives offering up more and more opportunities for search. This hasn’t always been the case as search engines initially did not give social media much thought when considering it as a ranking factor. Moreover, links on websites such as Wikipedia didn’t count, and neither did all those Twitter and Facebook posts.
The leader of Google’s Web-spam team and unofficial spokesperson, Matt Cutts revealed the later part of last year that the search engine have now begun to include a limited amount of social links in its search rankings, those social sites and profiles that are accessible to the public and can be crawled by data crawlers. According to Bing, the search engine is now also taking into account how often a link is tweeted and retweeted to determine ranking and placement in the search results.
Content: Of course, content is still the “king” of search as you’ve probably heard this statement countless times all across media publications, discussions and conferences. Well, it’s true. Whether it’s for the search engines, encouraging people to link (link bait) or tweet; both people and the search engines care if the content is unique, useful, interesting, and exciting. This critical element has changed significantly because content that is valuable to someone, will get linked to, shared, tweeted or posted to it.
Marketers should be conscious of the types of content that is shared and spread socially throughout the web. Companies could be heavily scrutinized by the types of content they are posting and sharing. No doubt about it, Social Media has developed out into more of a significant measurement for search engine algorithms. In today’s world, not having a company blog, Twitter account or Facebook page is not only a missed opportunity to gain better search engine rankings, but also missed opportunities to connect with potential customers and sell more of your company’s offerings! In the words of Nike: “Just Do It.” It doesn’t matter how much emerging media changes or how technology evolves, our behavior and SEO continues to surround content and how effectively we’re communicating our message to our target audience. If we think it’s good, share it, allow customers to interact with it, most importantly let the search engines find it. The more informative content you have on your products and services the more customers and the better rankings you’ll achieve.
Thanks for Reading!
The Adventure Continues…
