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Keeping Up With Changing Search Engine Optimization

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SEO is an ever-changing process, taking those who work in this world along for the ride. Over time SEO has become as though it were a living thing, reacting to changes in its environment and assimilating new ideas with remarkable intelligence. SEO has never been immune to flattery and pretty words and as such has gone down a few poorly chosen paths and developed some rather bad habits along the way.

SEO Drops a Few Bad Habits

Like a good game of “Hot Potato” SEO has been tossing the concept of quantity back and forth with major search engines like Google, each seeing how long the other could hold on without getting burned. It looks like this time around it was Google that felt the first sting, and in reaction pushed out a few updates that really took the wind out of the sails of SEOs all over the world.

Have You Been Feeling the Burn?

If you’ve been in SEO for a while or have been reading up on the subject, you’re familiar with an approach that worked really well for a long time: Get it while the getting’s good! The goal was to get as many links as you could as quickly as you could, and it really didn’t matter how or where because someone following any of these links back to your site wasn’t as important as someone finding your site high up in the SERPs thanks to all of the link building you had done.

In due course Google has done everything it could to reduce the effectiveness of the pro-quantity approach by penalizing sites and dropping their rankings, or banning them from the results forever. Sites with a lot of poor-quality content were affected, as were sites that gave or received a lot of low-quality links. After the anger and surprise over these updates and their effects on the world wide web, a new standard has begun to emerge like a phoenix from the ashes.

The Dawning of a New Age

It’s really kind of gratifying to see something that you’ve been telling people for years become adopted as a common rallying cry. I have always emphasized the need for quality and explained to my clients how a focus on quality content and genuine effort was going to win the day. Some people have not wanted to listen, instead choosing to take an approach that focused on quantity. Did it work for them? In the short term a lot of them did experience increases in rankings, but after a while their numbers dropped off, and then after the Panda and Penguin updates rolled out their sites were nowhere to be found.

It’s Not About You, It’s About Them

What is your goal for SEO? You want to increase your rankings, get more traffic to your site, and eventually make more sales, correct? Sadly, that isn’t what your customers care about. They want to see new things that are interesting, useful, and relevant to their daily lives. Content that addresses these needs is true quality content and that is what is going to get noticed.

In order to master search engine optimization for the new web, you’re going to have to discard the “What can they [customers] do for me?” attitude and move towards one that asks what you could do for them instead.

About The Author

Mentor to Collaborations of Bloggers and advocate for supporting small businesses by creating Geo-targeted Group Blogs. Find me here and @GrowMap on Twitter, Skype and everywhere else.

Website: http://GrowMap.com

8 Comments

Mark Pritchard

Thu 04th Oct 2012 at 1:12 AM

Nice post Bryan. You are absolutely right that SEO an ever-changing process, we have to discover new techniques implement them to increase the visibility of your website in search engines.
Reply
- Bryan P. Hollis
  
  Sat 20th Oct 2012 at 2:21 AM
  
  Thank for the kind words Mark, but I didn’t author this one.
  
  Bryan
  Reply
Gail Gardner

Thu 04th Oct 2012 at 5:19 AM

The previously leaked and then retracted changes to the Google Webmaster Guidelines are now public dated Oct 2, 2012 in the Google Webmaster Central Blog under Google Webmaster Guildelines Updated
Reply
Gail Gardner

Thu 04th Oct 2012 at 3:18 PM

Additional details on the new guidelines at http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

They don’t define comment spam and they do want to stop bloggers from being able to make a living. See http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356
Reply
Gail Gardner

Fri 05th Oct 2012 at 2:04 AM

Additional links regarding the recent Google Webmaster Guidelines changes:

This link goes into much greater detail
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769 (Thanks to Marj Wyatt for that one.)

I wish them luck defining comment spam >> http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2721437

Does anyone know if the Google guideline against “automated content” includes posts created by solutions such as Datafeedr, Popshops or Datafeedfile? http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2721306
Reply
Justin Mazza

Sat 06th Oct 2012 at 9:16 AM

Well said Gail. I took the the recommended approach from day one which was to deliver value to my readers. My search traffic is still half of what it was a year ago.

I did a ton of commenting in my first year of blogging, maybe I commented on some of the wrong blogs.
Reply
Gail Gardner

Sat 20th Oct 2012 at 2:11 AM

Hi Justin,

While Google can spin the “you got slapped because you’re a bad boy or girl nonsense” and many will believe them – that is b.s. and we should all know it by now.

Legitimate small businesses and blogs with only original content are regularly slapped by Google and they are intentionally churning the results on page one so that no one can count on the traffic they once received.

The best defense is to get new comments, links and shares to any page that once brought you a lot of traffic. The most brilliant SEO I know shared that tip and I have seen it work.

The other thing you must do – especially if we’re talking about ecommerce and affiliate sites – is to realize that when they take your money phrases away and hand them to their big brand buddies those are done. Go find a similar long tail phrase they haven’t broad matched yet and milk it for all you can. When it goes away do it again. If you can’t find one you may have to focus on selling something else.

That is an observation I made on AdWords way back around 2004-5 and that was confirmed by an affiliate marketer I know who is still making good money and coaches others to do just what I just recommended.

The bottom line is Google has a monopoly and just like the house in Vegas they always win because they control the game. Either figure out how to win on the edges or help me create a new game they can’t control.

For many issues with Google see the post linked to this comment.
Reply
- Bryan P. Hollis
  
  Sat 20th Oct 2012 at 2:19 AM
  
  Here’s one for you guys. Was on the phone with Google for 2 hours a couple of days ago and lost my cool.
  
  http://bloginteract.com/stories/bing-search-thankfully-outpaces-googles-search-engine-the-e-zine-group/
  Reply