There’s been a lot of speculation over the course of the last month about changes in SEO marketing. With Google’s launch of Hummingbird at the end of August and release of Penguin 2.1 only a few days ago, many internet marketers and business owners are waiting with bated breath to see how their search engine rankings will be affected. Though Hummingbird seemed to affect only a small percentage of searches and Penguin 2.1 has supposedly affected only about 1%, many are concerned about ongoing attempts by Google to cut back on spammy links, especially in the face of looming loss of keyword statistics from Google.
There may be some uncertainty in the world of Seo marketing, but there is one thing that’s certain: search engine optimization is by no means dead. Rather, it means that Seo marketing has to make a shift we’ve long anticipated. Real SEO is less about anchor text, link building, and keywords and more about generation of high-quality content that is useful to the end-user. Here are a few SEO marketing tips to prepare yourself not only for the current changes, but for future roll-outs from Penguin.
- Write useful content. Google is trying to ensure that top-ranking sites are ranked highly because they have genuine value to users. By maintaining a blog and releasing frequent posts about industry-relevant content, you’re more likely to appeal to users, and therefore, to Google. It’s perfectly fine to integrate keywords into that content, but don’t make it the focus. The real goal is to produce something worthwhile.
- Syndicate that content. Instead of focusing on link-building, let users build links for you. With real SEO, the goal is to produce content that is of high enough quality that other users will want to share it. Get it out there through social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus so that users can see it, read it, and pass it along.
- Track your leads. Leads might not be coming directly from search engine ranking pages, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t coming from your SEO marketing efforts. As users share your content, it is seen by more and more potential customers who might even be directed to your site through other links. Carefully track your leads and conversions to determine what kinds of links are drawing interest.
The move toward real SEO is one that is leaving too many businesses behind as they strive to stay afloat in a spammy, leaky old boat. Hop on board the U.S.S. Real SEO for tactics that will keep you sailing toward better results.
