The best SEO practices as we know them are very different today from what they have been traditional.
Once upon a time, it was assumed that the best way to get ahead in the search engine rankings was to post as much content as humanly possible and get as many links as possible.
It was all about volume, all about quantity over quantity.
Today all that has changed. The precise opposite approach is the only viable option. In this post, we’ll look at the best SEO strategies and why they are what they are…
SEO Then And Now
When Google became the number one search engine, everyone clamored to try and figure out the best way to get to the top.
Fortunately, Google was relatively simplistic back then, so it didn’t take long to decipher precisely what Google’s algorithm involved.
Back then, Google used two primary methods to try and index content.
The first was to look for inbound links. Google’s spiders would follow links to find new web pages and see them as testimonials.
The more links a site had, the more popular it was deemed to be, and the assumption was that this would be a reflection of quality.
To discern the site’s subject matter, Google would look for exact keyword matches.
If a specific phrase were repeated often enough in the text, it would stand to reason that it must be highly relevant, and it would make sense to show the site when people searched for that term.
But the problem with this system was that it was too simplistic and too easy to manipulate.
It was only a matter of time before people began flooding their websites with repetitive uses of the exact keywords and with lots of low-quality (often paid) links.
In short, Google’s search results pages began to fill up with spam.
The New Order
Thus, Google had to update its algorithms; today, we see something much more sophisticated.
Today, Google uses advanced algorithms that consider the time visitors spend on each web page, the quality of the inbound links, and the use of synonyms and related terms.
Any attempt to try and play the system will risk having your site penalized or even de-indexed, and the result is that Google is now much more relevant in terms of the effects it brings up.
So what do search engine optimizers do now? Should they try and work out the new algorithm?
Of course, that’s what everyone is clamoring to do, but it somewhat misses the point.
The whole point is that Google doesn’t want us to work out how to manipulate its results.
If we ever find a reliable system that we can exploit to get to the top of the SERPs, then Google will change its workings again.
The only futureproof strategy in SEO, then, is to make a high-quality website that is particularly relevant to your audience.
If you do that, your goals will be aligned with Google, and any future updates will only help your site perform even better!