SEO – AS ALIVE AS EVER

Is SEO dead or alive? It’s a question that’s frequently asked.

In short SEO is not dead. I mean, SEO has an estimated value of almost $80 billion dollars – how could something that valuable be dead?

Many people think current advances in the technological world signal SEO’s death. This is wrong. Instead these advances mean online connectivity is the most important it’s ever been. As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to expand and more and more devices connect to the internet, to perform more and more searches, the importance of SEO will only increase.

I will admit that some SEO elements have died or evolved. To overcome this all you need to do is look at which SEO tactics you should move away from and which SEO tactics you should adopt.

Here are the tactics that you’re probably using at the moment but instead need to ditch:

Putting search engines before people. Google’s goal is to provide users with the most relevant and valuable results. If you produce this content Google is more likely to put you near the top of the search results.

Being seriously obsessed with that number one ranking spot. Search results today are cluttered with ads, so even if you rank number one your sight might still be buried. So instead, shift your obsession to maximising your click-through rate to see results.

Obsessing over keywords. As search engines become more sophisticated in determining what your page is about, the need for keyword optimisation is losing it’s important. So rather than stuffing your article with a certain keyword, look to optimize your content for an overall better user experience.

Going all-in on link building. The motto ‘quality over quantity’ applies perfectly in this context. A links quality is far more important than the quantity. After all, no one likes a spammer.

Creating way too many pages and posts. Google doesn’t rank websites, rather it ranks individual web pages. So, your focus should be on creating high-quality content by diving deep into a topic on one page. I don’t mean your whole website should be on one page, but don’t need break your site into a million tiny pieces, okay?

Enough of what not to do, here’s the SEO tactics you should be implementing:

You’ve got to be in this for the long term. Rankings take a long time to acquire. Almost 95 percent of newly published pages don’t get to page 1 within a year, so patience is key.

This probably goes without saying but don’t underestimate the value in creating high-quality content. Create content your target audience actually wants to interact with.

For research stick to topic research as opposed to keyword research. Keywords are old news. As search engines get smarter its more important for content to be relevant than be perfectly optimised.

Don’t forget about your old content, relaunch or edit it. Your older content is likely what forms the backbone of your sites traffic. So, find old content that ranked well and update that content.

Improve your CTR. Optimising your click-through rate is a hot topic in the search engine optimisation world today. Testing current titles and meta descriptions is an easy way to improve site traffic.

So there, SEO is alive as ever. As long as search engines exist, ranking in them will be important.