So folks, how do you determine your SEO strategy? Well, before you come back with answer, let’s step back.
What is Search engine Optimization, Anyway?
“Search engine optimization or SEO” has always been considered an odd term as it is somewhat misleading in the sense that we are not optimizing search engines.
SEO took place when webmasters optimized sites. Exclusively, they optimized the source code of web pages to get noticed by search engines. The purpose of SEO was to make sure websites positioned higher in search results than if the website was just left to website designers & copywriters. Often site designers would involuntarily make site uncrawlable and hence invisible in search engines.
However, there was more to it rather than just boosting crawlability.
SEO professionals analyzed the highest ranking page, watched the source code, regularly copied it extensively, added a few twists, and then republished the page. In this era of digitalism, this was all you required to do to attain an immediate higher ranking.
Well, I know it, as I had used to try it!
At that time, I considered it was an amazing yet entertaining hacker trick. It also happened to me that such ranking could be valuable. Obviously, this rather evident truth happened to many other people, too. They also used to neurotically track spiders, spotting latest spiders, as they popped up and guiding them through their sites in a flattering fashion.
When we talk about search engines, there has always been gambling. The dazzling prize awaits.
But the new breed of search engines, made things slightly fiddly. You could not only focus on optimizing codes in order to attain higher rank. There was something else occurring.
Backlinks: So, search engine optimization was no longer just about optimizing the fundamental page code, it was also about obtaining links. SEO hopped from being only a technical coding operation to marketing operation. Webmasters had to get to other webmasters & persuade them to connect.
Now, Google placed heavy importance on links, implementing a clever algorithm that sorted ‘good’ links from ‘bad’ links. This facilitated making Google’s result set more relevant as compared to other search engines. And, Google once claimed it was not possible to spam it. However, webmasters replied by spamming Google.
Well, I must say, Google likely categorized what a number of webmasters were doing as spam, at least within, & may have apologize for their previous hubris. Webmasters wanted links that looked same as good links. At times, they even earned them.
Google has been pushing back ever since.
Building links ealier SEO, & search engines, however, once backlinks were reckoned in ranking positions, link building was merged into SEO. Nowadays, most SEO professionals think link building a natural part of search engine optimization. But, as we’ve observed, it wasn’t.
We at times, get comments on how about marketing is not same as SEO. Well, it is, however if you look at the background of SEO, there has always been marketing factors involved. Obtaining eternal links could be typified as PR, or relationship building, or even marketing, but I doubt anybody would claim obtaining links is not a part of SEO.
More lately, we have observed a drastic transition in Google. It is a transition that is likely being turned out over a couple of years. It is a transformation that makes a lot of pre-dated SEO ales effective in the similar way bringing forth link analysis & meta-tag optimization a lot less effectual.
Google is bringing different algorithmic changes to different sectors, so the SEO tactics used in one sector isn’t going to work for another sector. They are also pointing at engagement metrics, so they are trying to decipher if the user really required the result they clicked on. When you think of Google’s effort on PPC landing pages, this improvement is evident. It is the similar measure. If people click back regularly, too soon, then the quality of the landing page score drops down. It is likely occurring in search engine result pages, too.
So, just same as link building once got turned into SEO, engagement will be turned into it. Some may find it as a death of SEO, and in some manner it is, just like when meta-tag optimization, as well as other code optimizations, was deplored in favor of other, more helpful relevancy metrics. In other ways, it is SEO just transforming like it always has done, but the purpose remains the same.
Deciding on SEO Strategy:
So, how do you build your own SEO strategy? What will be your policy going forward?
Well, for help some read Google’s Guidelines, Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and watch Matt Cutts video. Webmasters follow it and there is nothing wrong in this.
It counts on what strategy you have adopted.
Think about your own personal influence and the influence you can handle without dollars or gold or even permissions from Google.