2013 Could be called The Year of A Thousand Google Changes. Ok, maybe not a thousand, but there were quite a few changes last year. Penguin saw another major update. Google encrypted organic keyword referral data. Hummingbird brought us semantic search. And Google Authorship was reduced. The constant state of flux kept marketers on their toes, tweaking and adjusting their approach to building and maintaining websites that will meet Google’s elusive criteria for a “quality” website. SEO success used to be fairly easy, and within the grasp of anyone with a vague understanding of the internet. But 2013 changed all that.
SEO used to be a stand-alone service, which is why so many people claimed to be SEO professionals. SEO agencies could exist in a bubble, never really worrying about the rest of your marketing efforts. They just trucked along building links and increasing your rankings in their own little world. This model is officially obsolete.
But SEO isn’t dead, despite the sweeping changes to the industry. As long as websites exist, you’ll have to optimize them for search. Your site code will always matter. Proper tags and markups will always matter. And content, link profiles, social signals, and local marketing will always matter. So even though SEO may be morphing as an industry, the basic tenets of SEO success are still the same.
SEO must now be part of your broader marketing picture. It exists in concert with your social media marketing, your content marketing, advertising, promotions, and public relations. SEO professionals must not only be analytical and methodical, they must be creative and have a firm grasp of marketing. So what are the new fundamentals for SEO success as we move forward?
Consistently Create Content
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. “Content is King.” How many times has that broken record been played over the last several years? Well, it’s still true. Content is still critical to SEO success. If your website doesn’t have a blog or an area that is updated regularly, your rankings will suffer. Freshness is a key piece of the ranking puzzle. Google rewards websites that regularly update with new an interesting content. The more content Google has to draw from, the more the search engine will understand what your website is about.
Not only will your rankings suffer if you’re not updating your site, but you’re not going to attract new customers, either. Content can help move prospects through the sales funnel. It allows you to connect with people and establish trust before you’ve ever had a single conversation. With content you can answer questions, overcome objections, and teach people about your products and services. According to Hubspot, businesses with websites that have 401-1000 web pages get six times more leads than those with 51-100 pages. That’s a pretty powerful testament.
Your Content Should Be Created For Humans, Not Spiders
In the past, many people took shortcuts with content in order to achieve SEO success. Rather than focus on quality, they focused on quantity, buying $5 blog posts form websites like O-Desk and Fiverr. And for many years, this was actually a viable tactic because it didn’t matter how the content read or what it said, it just mattered that your site was updated and keywords were included a certain number of times on each page.
But now, keyword stuffing will get you banned. Short, useless blog posts won’t count as quality content. Content should be created for people, not robots. If you’re using your content to generate an audience and solve problems for your clients and prospective customers, you’ll see an increase in traffic. But if you’re sticking to the old way of cranking out garbage, you won’t get many repeat visitors to your website.
But Content Isn’t Just Words
And though Google can only “read” words, your content should be more than just text. Text is crucial, and you shouldn’t abandon words, but 2014 should be the year you diversify. We’re living in a visual world. People like pictures. If you can tell a 300-word story with a simple graphic, do it. Graphics are incredibly sharable and easy to digest. And as we’re becoming more and more dependent upon mobile devices to consume content, video is going to become critical for reaching your audience. In order for Google to be able to properly categorize and rank your video and graphic content, they’ll have to be optimized.
Ask yourself the following questions about your website marketing plan as it relates to content creation:
- Have you planned a content marketing schedule or editorial calendar?
- Do you have the time and manpower to create the content yourself?
- Do you have the time and manpower to promote your content yourself?
If the answer to any of these questions is, “no,” it might be time to evaluate your plan for 2014. If you need to work with an outside partner, start lining up meetings. If you have a marketing department but you aren’t focused on content marketing, you may need to re-prioritize the team, or add extra staff.
Focus On Pages, Not Keywords
Just as SEO is not dead, neither are keywords. But just as you have to change the way you think about achieving SEO success, this is also the year to change the way you think about keywords. In the past, many SEOs lived and died by their keyword lists and rankings. Well, those days are over. You can no longer track organic Google keyword data, and it is a mistake to get hung up on the daily ebbs and flows of your rankings.
Instead, focus on your pages. Study your Google Analytics to see which pages are the most popular, and which are flops. Visit the pages that aren’t doing well and re-optimize them for performance as well as quality. Notice the recurring elements of the pages that are doing well. Use this type of page-level intelligence to go after new keyword themes and create new user-focused content.
Get On Google+
If you ask a room full of website owners and marketers what they think of Google+, you’d likely hear a lot of moans and groans. Despite Google’s best efforts to herd people into the platform, many people still don’t like it, don’t know how to use it, or ignore it all together.
The platform is still in its toddler years, and lots of users are still fumbling around in the dark, trying to figure out how to make it work for them. But for every zombie profile, there are plenty of people who are active and use Google+ to their advantage.
Your Google+ profile is attached to Google Authorship. We recently discussed changes to this program, but even if Google doesn’t grant you Authorship, you should still be active on the social network. Google claims that +1’s and shares don’t affect your rankings, but there still appears to be a relationship between activity on Google+ and SEO success. This is the time to get your business page claimed and get your personal profile connected to your website. Spend 10-15 minutes a day commenting, circling and plus-oneing and sharing. It can only help your overall efforts toward SEO success.
Links Still Matter
To say, “Create great content and the links will follow,” sounds lovely in theory, but in reality it’s just not practical or true. Link building used to be a matter of paying someone money to plop your URL on hundreds of sites a month. But that tactic can now get you penalized, if not outright banned form search results. But your link profile is still an important indicator of how popular and authoritative your website is. In the old days, 1,000 links from crappy websites was just as good as 10 links from strong sites like The Wall Street Journal. Now, that one link from the WSJ is worth far more than even a million links from shady websites.
As we’ve discussed before, it’s now about earning links, not building links. To earn links, you have to establish relationships with other websites in your industry. You’ve got to be connected to other professionals in your niche socially. You should share their content strategically and hopefully establish a reciprocal relationship where they will share yours, as well.
If links didn’t matter, Google wouldn’t spend so much time trying to out-fox the link builders of the world. So pay attention to your links, but approach with care and caution.
Be Everywhere (Think Like a Kardashian)
There is a reason that the Kardashian women are worth millions. For almost eight years, they’ve been everywhere. All the time. There wasn’t a single promotion or photo op that they turned down. The result? They were mentioned and seen on every entertainment show, blog, magazine, and podcast every day. You couldn’t turn on the TV or walk through the grocery store without seeing a Kardashian. Years later, you still can’t make it a few days without seeing or hearing about a Kardashian.
The Kardashians may leave you with a poor taste in your mouth, but make this the year you take a play from their marketing book. Just having a stand-alone website isn’t going to get you anywhere. You need to be on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube – wherever your potential audience is spending their time. Not only does this get you in front of potential customers wherever they are, but it creates the perception that you’re a big brand, even if you aren’t.
The more your potential customers see you in these other spaces, the more comfortable they will be with you. Just make sure you’re being strategic about your posts and interactions and do not ever, ever (ever) spam anyone.
SEO Success Isn’t What it Used To Be
It used to be that the measure of SEO success was a simple ranking report with lots of #1 positions. But as we dive headfirst into 2014, we have to change the way we think about SEO. SEO success may not be about ranking #1 for your favorite keyword. Instead, it may be about driving more traffic to your site from YouTube or Instagram. It may mean becoming a breakout Vine success. Or it could mean establishing thought leadership in your niche. Overall, you SEO success for 2014 will be about your ability to adapt to the new landscape.
How will you tackle SEO in 2014? Let us know in the comments!