Anyone in the digital media industry will tell you that SEO changes regularly. Some things develop yearly, others change monthly and some seem to be amended on a weekly basis. Whichever aspect you look at and over whatever time, however, there\’s little doubt that SEO changes frequently.
As such, it leads many people to feel as though they\’re constantly chasing the latest techniques. They\’re continually looking to see what they\’re doing wrong, what they need to change and ultimately, what they have to be doing to ensure they remain on the path to page one rankings.
And as a result, plenty of people end up trying to guess what\’s going to happen next with SEO. Will it be something to do with backlinks? What about social signals? Reviews and customer feedback, perhaps?
Without doubt some \’guesses\’ are correct, but the truth is, you don\’t actually have to guess what\’s going to happen if you\’re doing one thing – and that\’s focusing all of your efforts on your customers, something you should have always been doing.
The whole purpose of SEO is to ensure your website is as prominent as it can be for your audience. Traditionally, this has meant optimising your website so it stands out in the search engines and whilst this is still a consideration today, the process has generally extended to take into account all types of potential customer engagement.
As such, if you keep this in mind at all times, you should have very little reason to feel as though you need to continually be chasing \’the next big thing\’ in the SEO industry.
Reach out to your customers on Twitter. Engage with them on Facebook. Provide updates on your company blog about information that\’s going to be of interest to them. Send out regular e-mails with offers and promotions that you have available. Get in touch with other popular blogs and websites and interact with a new portion of your audience.
When you do this, you\’ll be satisfying your audience – and when you\’re satisfying your audience, you\’re doing your utmost to ensure they\’re going to return to your website, make repeat purchases and recommend your organisation to their friends, family and beyond.
And when this happens, do you really need be chasing around for little tips, tweaks and tricks that you have to make?
What\’s more, if you do do this, when changes such as Google Panda and Penguin are made, you shouldn\’t be impacted on negatively in any major way, meaning you can ride the bumpy wave of SEO changes easily whilst those who haven\’t been doing the above struggle to keep their head above the water.
Image: mdpettitt (Flickr)