You’re in 2014, and the search engine game is still changing!
Unfortunately, it will never stop changing.
Is that a good thing or bad thing? Well… That depends
If your wanting SEO the old (easier) way where you gained lots of backlinks and wrote pages full of stuffed keywords (quality need not apply), then probably a bad thing.
However, if your SEO is not only about “getting them onto your page” and you are looking to build a social community around your SEO, then welcome to the new game in 2014!
But if you’re wondering: “What do I need to do RIGHT NOW in order to start making changes towards my SEO that works for today and the future?”
…Then I’m going to provide you with some clues towards what actions you can take today:
- Quality Over Quantity—But Increasing the Quantity While Keeping the Quality Up is Even Better
Today’s SEO is less about quantity and more focused on quality. But you’re still in a competitive market, so keeping a focus on both is even better.
Everything about SEO is the same, but now quality needs to be involved. Onpage SEO, gaining back-links, keyword research, and keyword density are still relevant towards increasing your webpage’s ranking on search engines today—just like they were yesterday.
However, the day’s prior to the Panda and Penguin updates, it was mainly focused on quantity:
- Get as many backlinks as you possibly can, no matter where they come from
- Write your content with the keyword you want as many times possible
- Get as many one phrase anchortexts pointing to your website as possible
The old spammy ways of doing SEO simply don’t work—or, if they do, only result in short-lived results. You need to have a focused plan towards not only getting a high volume of the above listed items, but also put a humungous focus on the quality as well.
Not to fret, we will show you everything needed. And while it takes more work, this is actually good news for you. As long as you’re willing to take on the new challenges for ranking high on the search engines, you should be able to outrank your competitors at unparalleled levels—as it is unlikely your competitors are doing everything we will mention.
But to close this topic, for every SEO tactic you endeavor for your website, your new focus needs to be on quality and diversity. This includes the websites you choose for backlinks, all the way down to the content you write online. If you want mind-blowing SEO results that will help you rank high for the long term (and who doesn’t?), then quality will need to be your new SEO’s backbone.
- Mix your SEO with Social Media & Content Marketing
If you want to know what the best SEO tactics are being used today, I’d say it’s none better than integrating your SEO with content marketing and social media marketing
And there are 2 important reasons why:
- Search Engines are beginning and will continue to rank based upon your content’s quality as well as how it is shared (both backlinks and social media).
- SEO, Content Marketing, and Social Media Marketing all work together. When you use all three online marketing approaches, it’s like creating that perfect atomic bomb that will explode your online marketing success in all angles. Together they bring what I call the “compound effect.”For example, someone does a search online (SEO) and finds your informative article (content marketing). They your article so much that they share it with others on FaceBook (Social Media Marketing).
When you integrate all three advertising mediums together, you get a compounding effect.
Therefore, focus on all of these and integrate them together, don’t simply focus on SEO alone.
Focus Less on Your Rankings
Once upon a time, before all the major algorithm changes we’re encountering today (such as Google’s Panda and Penguin updates), websites were more focused on their rankings.
They would use websites like Amazon’s Alexa site ranker to evaluate their ranking and focus on ways to get them ranked higher. While some SEO companies still focus on rankings, there is no doubt that this isn’t how the game can be entirely played.
Today, there is a stronger focus on hunting down and using Long-tail keywords within your content, allowing you to rank and convert higher, even if your website isn’t ranked the highest on Alexa. However, it is important to mention that new ranking methods are out, such as Moz’s Domain authority, which may be more relevant than other ranking mechanisms (such as Google’s PageRank). Therefore, you may consider using DA over Page Ranking.
Focus Today on Long Tail Keyword
Some believe conducting keyword research and adding keywords is bad practice because you should simply focus on the quality of your content and naturally SEO will come.
But if done right, adding keywords is a good thing. It shows that you are looking up what your users are searching for, and if you’re providing them the content that they are actually wanting, then adding keywords is a great thing to do.
But unlike trying to get tons of search traffic from high-ranked keywords, if you want to get larger organic search results today, you should focus more on long-tail keywords. In fact it is estimated that most websites obtain somewhere around 90% of their organic search results directly from long-tail keywords.
So why go after long-tail keywords? Actually there are many reasons. For starters, Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for. If you use the right tools and do your own keyword research, you can find long-tail keywords that are very easy to rank on because there is very low competition for them.
Another great reason is they usually convert higher. For example, if a user is searching for “Blue Nike Shoes,” they are more likely to make a purchase over someone just typing “shoes” because they are being very specific for what they want. Therefore, today you want to focus more on long-tail SEO keywords which will allow you rank easier for search engines and convert more visitors into sales.
One great tool to help find long-tail keywords is ubersuggest.org, where you can type in a keyword and find some great alternative keyword suggestions. I also suggest going to places like yahoo answers and see what people are asking about and come up with new keyword ideas from that. If someone is asking it on yahoo answers, then it’s likely that others are searching for it.
Focus on Onpage Optimization
Your website could have the absolute best content that everyone is dying to read, but if the search engine crawlers (like the Google bot) are unable to crawl and interpret your website, then it’s going to affect your SEO rankings.
Focusing on your website’s onpage optimization is important, and when it comes to optimizing your website there are two important areas to focus on:
- The speed of your website
- Proper Indexation and accessibility of your website
Speed of your website
While Google admits that your website’s speed is a consideration for SEO ranking for their search engine, they also mentioned that it’s not a huge ranking factor (at least at this time). Google takes notice of the fact that websites taking longer to load have a higher bounce rate. To Google, a bounce means the user didn’t get the information they wanted, and this does not make Google happy!
This is exactly why Google places an emphasis on your website’s speed for ranking.
While we don’t know the total weight that website speed has on SEO rankings, because Google does consider it, you should make consideration towards increasing your website’s speed performance for two critical reasons:
- Google (as well as other search engines) may end up placing a larger emphasis on your website’s speed performance in future algorithms.
- It has been shown that by increasing your website’s load time, this can helps makes your website more user-friendly, which ultimately helps convert higher. Therefore, think about speeding up your websites with the perspective of a user experience as well.
Proper Indexation and accessibility to your website
The next important aspect of onpage SEO is ensuring that it is accessible for Google to index. Having a website that Google is able to index properly ensures that Google is able to visit all pages of your website so that they are indexed for future search queries. Here are some areas you need to focus on:
- Focus on having a site map so that Google can quickly obtain links to all of your pages.
- Matt Cutts—leader of the anti spam team with Google, suggests making sure all of your important pages are one to two links away.
Focus on Relevant Backlinks
There is no doubt that back links still play a major factor in SEO ranking. But a new game has come in and it’s focused on relevancy and not necessarily the PR ranking. You want to focus not just simply on page ranking (PR) values, but also focus on websites that share similar content as yours.
So for instance, if your website is about Dogs and you sell pet accessories, then you want to find other websites that also talk about Dogs to obtain backlinks from.
It’s okay to still focus on getting some high PR websites that are unrelated, but today it’s more about relevancy. Also we don’t know what weight Google places for PR values. A new algorithm was created by Moz.com called Domain Authority. Domain Authority looks at other important areas that Page Rank does not put as much importance into, including the Domain’s age, the number of times new content is updated, how popular it is within the social media networks, etc. Using domain authority to determine which websites to get backlinks from may be a better option over using page rank.
Focus on Having a Diverse Amount of Anchortexts
You want to not only focus on diversifying your anchortext backlinks you are using, but you also want to make sure that your website is pointing to a large number of different webpages on your website. You also want to consider that newer backlinks may show as being more relevant to search engines because they show your website is still “alive.” Therefore, make sure your backlinks are pointing to new content on a consistent basis (possibly new blog postings, etc.).
Conclusion
If you’re ready to get into the new way SEO has changed and will continue to change, then nothing more can be said than making sure you focus on quality and diversity with your SEO efforts. Make sure you are doing both content and social media marketing as well. Put these principles into action for your SEO, and you should begin to see tremendous results.
