SEO, a form of internet marketing, is a method of using content to rank your business on the search engines. It was more popular in the last 5-7 years, but recently many agencies are finding it hard to have success. This is due to the ever changing and secretly kept search engine algorithms and updates.
The Google Panda update was responsible for many websites and businesses going under. The Panda update resulted in many websites losing their rankings which lead to a decrease in overall search traffic or organic traffic.
The question remains, does search engine optimization still work or is it dead?
When you do a quick search on Google on a keyword SEO, you will see a list of reputable companies the offer this service. This shows you that as long as there are people out there offering this service, it still has potential. If you did the same search 5 years ago, you would get all sorts of results. This has changed because Google is getting ‘Smarter’. Google algorithms are beginning to blacklist websites that has no credibility and whose main objective is to rank so as to get traffic other than to offer value.
See below Rand Fishkin’s top 5 SEO tips for 2016
Gone are the days when one would write keyword rich content and rank for those keywords.
According to recent research, it was proven that Google is relying more on the value that the user gets from a website. This can be measured by the bounce rate, social signals, commenting and also sharing by the users. If your website has a huge bounce rate, then your ranking is definitely going to suffer. How engaging are your readers? Do they share your content more often? Do they subscribe to your newsletter? How much of those readers stay at your website for a particular time? All these are some of the questions that Google tend to look at.
Link building is still a major backbone of your ranking. They can make your business or break it. Having spammy back links done by a Fiverr user can result in a penalty thus harming your business. The best way is to do the back linking the legitimate way. This can be achieved via guest posting to other niche related websites, creating and distributing your content to Article Directories with credibility. Both government and Edu websites tend to have credibility hence they should also be in your plan. If you have to hire someone to do back linking for you, then it’s advisable to hire the ones who will do it manually. This process might be time consuming but it has a long term benefit.
Use YouTube more often. It’s with no doubt that YouTube is the second biggest search engine behind Google, and it is widely underused! This is because people have not yet understood the power and the potential behind YouTube. Having a YouTube channel where you publish more often and have a link that points to your website might be vital. Managing your video marketing can build your business as videos have a higher conversion rate compared to plain text.
In order to get some further details and even a quote for SEO for your local business, contact Top Spot SEO in Melbourne. They have been leaders in internet marketing, website design and search engine optimisation for over 10 years, and have the experience and know how to give you the right advice.
Conclusion:
SEO is not dead as many people claim. What is dead are the old techniques that people used before. Trying to implement those techniques right now will not have any positive effects on your business. As Google and other search engines change and update their algorithms, so should you. This will help you stay safe and ahead of your competition. In content marketing it’s either you adopt or you perish.