SEO has changed a lot in recent years. We\’d actually say it\’s the one digital media resource that has changed the most.
Gone are the days when you could stuff your content full of keywords and expect to be at the top of page one for them. In fact, gone are many of the techniques used previously, at least in their original form.
Due to the constant development of SEO, it\’s easy for people to get confused about it. As things change, questions can be raised over whether this still works, if that has the same impact as before or whether doing those things will have a positive or negative impact.
Whilst there\’s a lot to take into account when looking at SEO today, there are some interesting things you\’re unlikely to be aware of – and these five, in our eyes, are some of the most notable.
1. Links still count. A lot.
Although you may find people saying that backlinks no longer play a role in SEO, the reality is that couldn\’t be any further from the truth.
On the most basic level, Google\’s search engine algorithm is based on links. They tested rankings without the focus on links, but it just didn\’t work.
However, whilst links are still paramount to SEO today, it\’s the quality and relevance of them that\’s key – one high quality backlink from a worthy, relevant source is going to have considerably more value than two dozen links from completely unrelated sources.
2. The customer experience is key to success
Whilst SEO was once a process that seemed to focus on technical aspects above all else, today, although the technical aspects are obviously vital, it\’s delivering a first-class customer experience that should be seen as the most important focus.
The simple fact is, if you deliver tools, techniques and resources that are going to result in your customers having a better experience with your company, it\’s going to ultimately result in more traffic and hopefully, more sales – and this is what you really want to achieve from your investment, right?
3. You don\’t need to publish content every day
The response to this aspect is very much like the one above with regard to links.
You may see a lot of people talking about how important it is to publish content each and every day. Perhaps even several times a day.
Whilst there\’s no doubt this can be fantastic, you have to keep in mind at all times that quality must come before quantity – if you\’re only able to create one blog post per week that you feel confident people are going to genuinely benefit from, this is always going to be better than five blog posts you\’ve created quickly and which have very little chance of being interacted with.
4. Social media IS important
There\’s a lot of discussion about whether social signals have a direct impact on SEO. Irrelevant of the actual answer, you need to think about social media in its overall sense.
There are millions upon millions of people using social networks regularly, all ready for you to reach out to and engage with. Do so effectively and you\’ll soon be driving visitors to your website, which in turn will help to increase your standings in the search engines (as the more active a website is, the more successful it will be).
5. It\’s about more than just ranking on page one
Whilst SEO was originally about doing just this, today your aim should not be to purely get listed on the first page of Google\’s search results for specific keywords.
Instead, you need to be looking at the outcomes you\’d like to achieve as a result of this and focus any efforts around these.
For example, you\’re almost guaranteed to want to gain more website traffic and conversions. Therefore, if you\’re investing in SEO and are achieving this, but you\’re not on the first page of Google for your chosen search terms, this is still a positive outcome.
The truth is, it might actually prove to be a more positive outcome – ranking on the first page of Google alone doesn\’t necessarily mean you\’re going to get traffic or conversions.
Simply put, you need to be thinking about what it is you want to achieve from an SEO investment and then base the success of any strategy around these points, not just solely on whether you\’re ranking on the first page of Google.
We fully appreciate just how complicated SEO can be today and as a result, we aim to do our utmost to make things as clear and as straightforward as they can be.
Therefore, if you have any questions about SEO – or in fact any digital media resource – please do just get in touch and we\’ll be sure to answer them immediately.
Image: mate2code (Wikipedia)