The recent sweeping changes in Google’s algorithm and analytics have left some website owners and SEO pros shaken. Those who leaned heavily on link building have been hit especially hard, dealing with lost rankings and traffic in the wake of the shift to semantic search. These marketers did not heed the calls of the last two years to focus on audience development and content rather than link profiles. But, Hummingbird has officially forced the issue. However, the new SEO is not all that much different from the old ways.
Traditional, old-school SEO plans looked something like this:
- Conduct an audit
- Adjust coding as needed
- Conduct keyword research
- Create content to support keywords
- Build links
- Measure results
- Analyze
- Make necessary adjustments
- Repeat
If you followed these steps, you’d typically yield good results over time. And if you pushed strong link building, you could usually accelerate the process. So how do you need to adjust your plan for the new SEO?
(Not Provided) Is Not The End Of Keyword Targeting
Google made two key changes this year: semantic search and the encryption of all organic search queries. Many people took this to mean the death of keywords. But keywords should never be ignored. In fact, if you were doing keyword research correctly all along, you don’t have to change anything about your process.
Exact-match keyword targeting has always been a bit of a mistake. Many people liked the tactic because it was easy as pie. Google told you what people were searching for, so you matched up your anchor text and poof! Rankings! But those who understood that content should be developed for users rather than robots, understood something critical about keyword research. They knew keyword research should never have been limited to looking at the keywords that bring people to your site. They always knew that keyword research should instead be about finding expressions that people use to search for content.
Think about how hard it can be to match popular keywords to your content creation topics. It’s often awkward. Sometimes darn near impossible. That’s why marketers who put user experience above everything else managed to come away from these recent updates unscathed.
Keyword themes are still important. Every page you create should have a singular focus. Every piece of link bait should be optimized appropriately. But rather than focus on the rankings of a list of three-word phrases, your keyword research should be focused on the thoughts, ideas, and questions people have when looking for the types of products and services you provide. Themes should be your new focus.
The new SEO means targeting ideas rather than keywords. You should focus on specific keywords only when they are truly important to your audience. And you should use them in your titles because they signal what searchers will find after the click. The biggest takeaway for the new SEO is to target concepts over keywords.
Content Development Should Support Your Audience, Not Just Keywords
If you’re focusing your keyword research on user experience, your content development plan must follow suit. In the old SEO, content was created to support keywords. SEO companies that offered content creation services weren’t focused on building relationships with new and existing customers. They just needed to be able to show you that you ranked well for lots of keywords.
Those days are over. Frankly, they’ve been over for quite some time.
Developing content is about more than just regularly posting a few blogs or popping some videos on YouTube. You can’t just pay someone on oDesk to create content for $5 just so you have something to slap on your website. Content development must have a purpose. You have to provide information that is useful to the people who find you online. Answer their questions. Ease their fears. Educate. Entertain. Content for content’s sake will get you nowhere fast.
Once your keyword research has turned into some themes to focus on, work on developing an editorial calendar. It might be helpful to focus on one theme per month. Or, you can divide the themes among members of your team. Each week, have those team members generate new content around their specific theme. This will help you stay focused as well as create a robust content library for visitors.
What About Links?
Your link profile is still critical to SEO success. But you can’t just buy a ton of links. In fact, you shouldn’t buy any links. Ever.
If you’re paying someone to build links, you’d better understand what they are doing. Unfortunately, some companies still outsource link building overseas. They’ll show you a fancy graph illustrating all the links they’ve built each month. But if you don’t know where those links are coming form, you could be setting yourself up for disaster.
The authority of linking sites matters. If all of your links come from really crappy websites, you’re actually harming yourself. Link building for the new SEO is not a numbers game. It’s a quality game. It’s gotten to be so difficult and time consuming that many agencies have dropped this as a service all together. You can no longer automate link building or engage in massive blog outreach for results.
Link placement must be thoughtful and purposeful. Link “earning” is the new link building. You earn links by:
- Creating sharable content
- Interviewing experts in your industry and making yourself available to be interviewed
- Updating outdated content that .gov, .org or .edu sites link out to
- Making connections with influencers in your industry
It’s not as quick and easy as buying 250 links per month from a company overseas, but link earning is critical not only to the new SEO, but also to your overall marketing efforts, both online and offline.
Measuring and Analyzing Success
Link reports and keyword ranking reports were mainstays of the SEO industry for years. But moving forward, if you’re spending time obsessing over these reports, you’re going to be in trouble.
In order to measure the success of your campaigns, you’re going to have to study the big picture. Knowing what patterns and changes to look for over time will help you to understand which efforts have been the most successful. The new SEO is about building trust, not building links. You will have to know your sales cycle. If you have a long cycle, you can’t possibly measure the success of your SEO efforts after two months.
Study user behavior over time. Are more people finding you through search engines? What are they doing when they get to your website? How much time do they spend on your site? Where are they spending the most time? What are they ignoring? How has your pipeline grown?
It helps to begin with the end in mind. What is the goal of your SEO campaign? Is it to increase signups to your newsletter in order to capture leads? Is it to increase direct sales from your website? If you know what you’re trying to accomplish, you can tailor your site’s navigation, architecture, and content to help you meet those goals.
So What Does The New SEO Look Like?
It’s important to remember that SEO is just one component of a comprehensive internet marketing plan. Content marketing is a horse of a different color, and deserves its own plan. And everything you do should be supported by social networking, as well.
Moving forward your SEO plan should look something like this:
- Conduct an audit
- Adjust code as needed
- Conduct keyword research by understanding what is important to your audience
- Create useful, engaging, sharable content that helps your audience solve their most pressing problems
- Create strong calls to action
- Earn links
- Measure results
- Analyze
- Make necessary adjustments
- Repeat
Doesn’t look a whole lot different from the old SEO, does it?
The process of SEO is still very much the same, but the execution is much different than it was just a few years ago. Instead of focusing on bucking the algorithm, do precisely what Google is doing: attempting to understand searchers. If you understand your customers and tailor your approach to your audience, you can achieve success with the new SEO.
How are you adjusting your SEO strategy for the future? Let us know in the comments!
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