The New SEO
New Search Engine Optimization Tactics
Sep 12, 2011
Search Engine Optimization has been a constant battle for businesses, developers, other search engine companies, and all the bloggers around the world. Most amateur developers will tell you META Keywords are important or that somehow the CMS they use will help get noticed with little effort. Some design companies will tell you they have an inside tip at Google and know of all the various tricks to get you to the top of the search engine. Honest people will tell you they have no idea how it works entirely, just some key points to consider that's constantly changing. Truth of the matter is, the majority of people working on these algorithms for large search engines like Google only know a portion of how it works entirely. Google claims there are more than 500 changes every year to the search engine, based off extensive testing of its users. The equation is almost a bigger secret than Al Yeganeh's soup recipes.
Google maintains nearly 2/3rds of the search engine marketshare. Though Bing is slowly rising in the ranks, it often uses similar algorithms to return results. It is most likely due to the defaults set in Internet Explorer, which is the default browser for Windows OS, which make up a good deal of users who are simply surfing for something and not looking for a specific item.
What worked last year may not necessarily work this year, SEO is something you can't just pay for once and be completely set. You have to adapt to new methods as the search engine developers work to weed out the spammers and irrelevant articles.
Recently, Google launched their new social network, Google+, and rolled out several changes to many of their more popular services to make a more uniform workspace for Google customers. Some of the most noticeable, aside from the social network and Google+ Share button, were to the search engine itself, which originally sparked Google's smorgasbord of services. I've compiled a list of seven things business owners and developers should consider when building their websites and online marketing campaigns.
#1. Popularity on Social Networks DO Improve Your Ranking
The +1 Button allows your content to be shared by you and your friends through your Google+ circles and searches. This usually places the shared content relative to your search directly in the search results, a lot of times you'll find them at the bottom of the page (depending on how much its related to your query.) This also can be connected with other third-party accounts outside of Google+, like Twitter, Blogger, Flickr, and others. The Social Search placement depends on many things... traffic, popularity, date, your number of mutual connections, and so forth. This is a good reason why you should always have share buttons to the top social networks on your dated blog pages, and try to ensure you're maintaining appropriate URLs, as when you move pages around, they lose their "number of times shared" scores.
#2. Location, Location, Location
Another thing changed in Google's search engine recently, was the location setting. If the city, state, or both are in the pagetitle compared to the user search along with other keywords, it helps in ranking. I do not recommend making a page for every city and state, as the duplicate content for each city will possibly black flag your pages for mirroring. Also, links farms will most likely try to abuse these rankings, though it's a good idea to have your business or organization officially. Signing up to Google Places and adding your business to maps greatly outweighs, but only for a limited number of keywords, so it continues to be as relevant as possible.
#3. META Keywords
Forever, SEO "Pros", have offered to optimize a company's meta tags, and often used tricks to spoof the engines using Meta Keywords. Over time, Google, and other search engines, have stopped using the Meta Keywords in their rankings. Meta Descriptions, usually the summary of a page, do help improve in some instances, and you can use Meta Tags to control certain options, especially for search engine share features. Facebook provides a URL Debugging tool to help bloggers optimize their content before sharing, as their information is cached as soon as the URL is shared (this can cause making changes to be complicated.) Luckily Google+ does not cache their URLs, so you're able to fix a typo or thumbnail image after it's been shared. Though the keywords meta tag has no functional positive change for search engines, it can easily make your site look like a spamming site if it is abused — ultimately dropping your ranking.
Using meta tags in each of your pages is important, though it is essential to understand which help SEO, and which help direct traffic to provide more accurate results for targeted campaigns.
When talking about keywords, you should be discussing about words you actually fit into the content paragraphs or headings. Some people suggest comparing your results to that of other popular search terms. Remember, the more popular a term becomes, the more competition you will most likely have for that particular keyword. Be original and relevant, otherwise you're just wasting time.
#4. HTML 5 and Microdata
Microdata is like the meta tags for each individual element section within the content. This helps the search engines define snippets from particular sections. Like RDFa and Microformats, Microdata provides information to be passed along to the search engines so they can specify what content is being displayed. Microdata MUST be written in 100% pure HTML5, which still has a few years before it becomes the "norm." Microdata does not provide additional points for SEO, though the information being used to pass along to search engines can improve user functionality and userability equals traffic which equals popularity.
#5. Backlinks from Popular Sites
Sites with higher rankings pointing to your site usually get you better scores in search engines. If you have multiple sites with higher Page Ranks pointing to you, it benefits you significantly. This has been important for quite some time, though it is important to understand what it means.
Many people are still asking whether joining some link-trade program to help enhance their site. If you're caught trying to cheat, you can lose your popularity fast. If you get caught up in a link exchange with another site, and you're pointing to a site that gets flagged as spam, this will negatively impact your site. This is why most large websites only have outbound links to quality sites.
Think of it like this: The more people who point to you, the more credible your site appears to be. Though, it doesn't matter if you have thousands of low ranking sites pointing to you, and it doesn't help if you're a part of a link trading scheme to falsely inflate PageRank. These things actually can negatively impact your site's reputation if you're featured by spammers who get blacklisted. If you're looking to boost PageRank, do it the ol' fashioned way — by being popular and providing quality customer service. If you want to bring more attention, join a credible ad affiliates program like Google AdWords or sign up with high ranking sites such programs in place.
If you're caught trading links, you're likely to wind up getting pulled to the bottom along with the sites claiming to enhance your ranking. This is not "Survivor", you are not Parvati Shallow... joining alliances does not promote higher results or an increase in chances to gain. Once you're blacklisted or considered a spammer, it takes a long time to boost your ranking back up.
#6. Free Still Means What It Has For Years
Many companies offer "FREE SITE TEMPLATES", "FREE HOSTING", "FREE BUSINESS CARDS", or "FREE TOOLS" to help boost your site. If they're free, why are some companies paying tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to small teams to keep their site up-to-date?
Truth is, you shouldn't rely on cheap services to make your company look professional. You can pick food out of the garbage at a fancy restaurant, but most of us don't. It's not merely because of what others would think, or that you don't have options, but it's because it can actually be dangerous and cause several health problems. Your company image is the same, would you buy your gasoline from a guy going door-to-door passing out cheap flimsy paper business cards with a big Vista Print logo, offering more free business cards for the recipient, on the back of his/her business card? Would you consider purchasing your water from this individual? What about your groceries? These are all items used daily, yet we steer clear of the businesses trying to cut corners. Even if the products are discounted, they might seem like sketchy deals. People think the same thing when you try to market your other various professional services, no matter what industry you're a part of.
Anyone can setup a social network profile since they're free to use, so search engines don't weigh that heavily on the pages themselves (with exception to your friends shared links.) Also, the average time tends to be lower and the bounce rate tends to be higher for search engines, even though the user traffic tends to rank high. Reason being, people either click it by mistake, or click it and, see the first few words, and click Like or just go back to the site they were on as they're most likely not as interested as someone searching for it or sharing it.
Don't fall victim to these schemes, as many businesses have failed quickly due to a poorly managed web presence or a cheap looking piece of print materials. Corporate America spends billions every year on advertising and marketing, yet so many small business owners try to stretch their dollars when it comes to marketing. Some businesses go as far as hiring their 13 year old "computer whiz" nephew to make a site using Wordpress and get a bunch of Vista print business cards to help save a few dollars, though they end up spending more time and money working harder trying to get and maintain leads. Not to say your business should immediately invest in a massively customized CRM with all the bells and whistles, though you should consider what you do need, aside from a "simple" design, and consider seeking professional advice.
You wouldn't hire the same nephew to cook your clients dinner every night, do your taxes, remodel your kitchen, or handle all of your business contacts... why would you allow them to control the image and functionality of your business? Marketing can be expensive, and many companies will try to take as much as they can. This is why it is important to know what you're getting, how long it will take, and what your customers want to see... despite how pretty you might think that Flash animation looks. The image doesn't matter much for SEO, but the properly laid out content in a prioritized heirarchy, the properly coded design, and the increase in traffic can totally change how functional your site can be on search engines, ultimately yeilding more intended results.
#7. You're Never Done Adding Content
Blogs have become more popular nowadays for many of reasons. It gives insane people a place to rant about their wild conspiracies, and it builds fresh content on your site. Google weighs heavily on dated materials and if your site goes untouched for several months, it slowly starts to lose its points in the ranking system. One of the first things children are told when learning how to swim, is keep their legs kicking and arms paddling. If you just lay back and float lazily, you might stay on top for a while, but if you exhale and lose your breath, you'll start to sink to the bottom until you start kicking and paddling again.
Be sure to add a section on the homepage and each inside page's sidebars with constantly updated original content. This helps keep your site looking active, thus it will more likely be relevant to users.
Avoid copying content from other sites, as mirroring can potentially mark you as a lame site. Some bloggers simply take thousands of articles already produced related to popular search items, plug them into a site, and try to spoof search engines to bring them traffic. Be sure if you like an article, to write your own copy, and add a link pointing to the original site's article. Otherwise, developers could simply copy all other sites' content and plug it all into one massive super site, and would hypothetically have all the SEO combined. Common sense would tell you, this simply wouldn't work.
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Copyright 2011 Garret Overstreet. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcasted, rewritten or redistributed without an appropriate link to the original source.