Numerous rumors have been spread about the effectiveness of search engine optimization techniques, leading many people to the belief that SEO is either completely useless or totally unnecessary, but those conclusions are far from true.
Sure, it might be a fact that many have struggled to rank high in the search engines only to never achieve their goal. It is indeed true that many highly profitable web pages that once ranked high on Google were pushed to the bottom of the search results by way of algorithm changes, but that’s no reason to give up hope.
With a strong, solid search engine optimization strategy, your website can get the type of rankings that propel you forward to goal accomplishment. The strategy must be built on smart insights as well as Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, but that’s a fairly easy thing to do.
Perhaps you’ve heard that Google uses more than 200 ranking factors in its algorithm, including things like domain age, number of backlinks, quality of backlinks, meta tags, social signals, and content quality. Some of these factors are in your hands to control, and some of them aren’t, but every day web pages are being ranked high because the owner of those pages focused on optimizing for the ranking factors they could control, instead of worrying about the ones they couldn’t.
Still think SEO doesn’t work? There are far too many success stories and case studies to prove that’s not the case.
One of the reasons some claim search engine optimization doesn’t work anymore is because of the value of the longtail keyword. Longtails are generally easier to rank for due to lower competition, and because Google works hard to give its users quality search results that match what they’re looking for.
According to the perception of those who think SEO is dead, creating unique content is good enough for getting traffic from search, as long tail keywords will naturally be woven into the content as long as it stays on topic. They know there’s no way they could guess all the search terms a potential visitor might use to reach the website from the search results pages, so they don’t see the point of things like keyword research and meta description optimization.
It’s easy to overlook longtails, and many undervalue them because of their low search volumes, but targeting and optimising for longtail keywords is an SEO strategy that works, as a single web page can be ranked for hundreds, even thousands of longtails on purpose, sending through a ton of traffic from Google. Yes, the power of online success remains in the hands of the webmaster, and intelligent SEO is the tool they use to tap in to and control that power.
The bottom line is that SEO is feasible and it works. It’s only when SEO is approached incorrectly that problems ensue.
In order to understand what great search engine optimization really is, it’s helpful to first understand what a horrible SEO strategy looks like. So many websites have disappeared from the search results, and even banned by Google thanks to shabby, shady SEO tactics.
While some search engines might reward scrupulous optimization methods, Google doesn’t. In fact, the search giant has acted so aggressively against spam that it has made many bitter enemies of those who once desperately sought out the type of glory only Google can bestow, but it’s vital to consider Google’s Webmaster Guidelines when focusing on SEO, as this is the search engine has remained number one for decades, and that status surely isn’t going to change any time soon.
This means thinking that spun content blasted to hundreds of low quality article directories is going to help you rank a site is misguided. So too is mass blog and forum commenting, most guest blogging strategies, and posting content to private blog networks. Doing these things is indeed the worse way to do SEO, and such methods aren’t any easier than doing SEO right.
Besides the technical aspects, such as clean website code and fast page load times, you’re best bet is to focus on considering your target audience and providing them with fresh, useful content full of well-researched longtail keywords. From there, gaining backlinks and social signals becomes a lot easier, because your readers will help.
SEO is Important for every website owner who wants to rank higher in search results. The SEO rules have changed but not the goal, to increase visitor traffic.
