It all over the internet, every business is talking about it. If you are not on it, people look at you like you are on the stone age. The internet is abuzz with success stories of social media revamping businesses and how today mom and pop shop may just take over the world.
Add to this the frequent updates in the Google algorithm, the most frequent in recent times has been the Farmer Update and now the Panda Update – currently at 3.4 and still going strong. The farmer update was the first strike at websites carrying spammy content. Most of the tried and tested third party content sites (ezine, article *** saw traffic drop by 90% in a day).
The current update of Google indicating that your presence and your interaction in the social space will make a change to the way you are people see on Google results. Everything you say and do as a brand on Facebook, Twitter and Google + will make an impact to the way you are displayed in the search results.
The SEO killer? This contraption which looks like something out of a mad scientists lab seeks to put an end to all the SEO companies in the world. It claims to crawl the entire web and analyze the current trends real time, add to it the behavioral analysis from the social signals and behold you are a step ahead of Google.
Is this the end of the SEO Consultant? Have Google and all other search engines ensured the closure of this business.
Developer keep SEOs in business - A quote by Jill Whalen. But an industry is not sustainable on the mistakes of another.
SEO has been around for more than 10 years. As any business it has evolved over that period of time. Sometimes to keep on top of the competition and at times to forced to evolve because in changes in the Google algorithm. SEOMoz has classified the ever changing role of an SEO consultant over the years. Ensuring the website is found, ensuring it is found for the right keywords and ensuring the right websites are talking about your website. To these basic parameters got added the means to get there – be it creation of xml sitemaps, leveraging press release websites, local optimization and so on. Note if your current SEO company/agency is not at par with these recommendations you are already 4 years behind.
You may just about end up with your website looking like this. Beware Google Panda is not just restricted to content farms – if you have a website that’s optimized like this you will be in for a shocker.
Keyword research has been the crux of SEO all along. Get the right set of keywords basis the business goals and the target audience and let Google do the rest. A core keyword in todays concept not just has to be viable from a search volume standpoint, but also the keyword intent needs to match the business goals. Keywords should then be correlated with target personas and need states to help drive the build of content that is optimized for people first and search engines second. Audience Research –The Facebook Ads tool is the Adwords Keyword Tool of personas. The Doubleclick Ad Planner is also good for understanding the demographics of existing sites. If available, Facebook Insights gives demographic data on the existing users visiting the site as well. The output of this is a set of user segments and stories or – personas.Analytics Mining – As always, you should mine existing analytics data to understand who is visiting. Take deep dives into keyword performance, especially in concert with any internal Search data, to identify opportunities.Social Listening – Using a core set of keywords, collect data on the conversation around those keywords. Keep track of patterns and identify user segments, demographics and need states of the people partaking in that social conversation. You’ll also want to keep track of how these users are using the keywords as this will allow you to eliminate ambiguity in keyword decisions and help to create messaging that resonates with the audience during the customer decision journey.
Content Creation and content strategy has also gone beyond the traditional articles and blogs. Though these are still important and Google bot as such still loves loves them. The last PANDA update has blogspot as one of the winners. Content development now also envelops images, videos, infographics and so on. The constant thrust from Google has been to create content for users and now for search engines. How do we do that? Google Trends lets you research on trending keywords in your business. Look for the change in demograhics and search patterns for your important keywords themes. Rising searches will help spruce up your long tail keyword strategy.