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Understanding Search Engine Optimization

Just as building a beautiful storefront is not the only factor that will result insales for your business, online marketing involves much more than creating agorgeous website.

Sure, having a well-designed website that users find fast and easy to use isextremely important. However, in order for your business to succeed, yourcustomers and prospective customers must be able to find you online whensearching for the products or services you sell.

Studies have shown that more people are likely to get to a particular websitefrom search engines than any place else. Consequently, if your customers andprospects are unable to find you online, they will be doing business with yourcompetitors instead.

The fact of the matter is, if you're doing business on the web, SEO needs to be astrategic component of your overall internet marketing strategy. Essentially, theultimate goal of SEO is to generate high quality leads by delivering a consistentflow of "targeted traffic" to a specific website.

This is the kind of traffic that tends to lead to increased sales or conversions, andboosts business profitability.

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What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is part of a larger umbrella of marketing calledsearch engine marketing (SEM).

Marketing is the process of connecting, engaging, and influencing your potentialcustomers to buy from you, being able to earn their loyalty and building yourbrand within the marketplace. Search engine marketing, on the other hand, isthe process of generating qualified leads and increased visibility from searchengines through both paid and unpaid efforts.

Search Engine Marketing can happen in two key ways.

SEO: SEO is a structured, process-driven business strategy that is used tosecure a high-ranking placement for a particular web page or site in organicsearch results so that you are more visible to users who are searching for theproducts and services you sell online.

Paid search: Paid search will provide the fastest return on investment. It’sfast to setup, easy to test, and you’ll generate traffic to your site prettyquickly. The most typical form of paid search is pay-per-click (PPC)marketing. Examples of PPC marketing include Google AdWords, Social ads(such as Pinterest promoted posts, Facebook ads and LinkedIn ads) and Bingads.

The merits of using SEO in online marketing include:

High popularity and visibility

Top ranking in search engine results

Improved traffic

Online branding

Boost in online sales

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Take a moment to think about the search terms someone might use whensearching for your business. For example, if you’re a photographer inNorthampton that offers boudoir as part of your range of photography services,possibilities could include:

boudoir photography northampton

northampton boudoir photo studio

makeover studio northampton

Now, search Google for those terms.

Does your business show up?

If not, SEO is how you get there. If you have a website and your business doesnot show up in the search results when your potential customers are searchingfor it is just the same as customers searching for a restaurant but driving rightpast without seeing it.

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SEO Isn’t Dead; It Has Evolved

At this point, it is important to understand that SEO has fundamentally changed overthe past few years. Some authors have even gone as far as saying “SEO is dead”.However, SEO is not dead; it has simply evolved.

Google search is now powered by semantic search, and an SEO strategy that may haveworked well in the past is no indicator of SEO success today.

In the old days, SEO was a standalone, purely technical skill that revolved around twoprimary constants: keywords and backlinks. Keywords were critically important toestablish relevance to a search query, whilst links were needed to help the websiterise in the search rankings.

Although this is an oversimplification of the Google search ranking process, it is safe tosay that keywords and links were the main drivers of SEO in the past. This made itrelatively easy to game the system. Black hat SEO’s with deep pockets were able tooutrank websites on Google fairly quickly by purchasing hundreds of aged domains tocreate massive blog networks.

These blogs provided no value whatsoever to the consumer, and were typically filledwith keyword-rich content that was used to generate artificial links to the money siteusing anchor text over-optimization techniques.

This type of black hat SEO strategy was so successful that there was a three to fiveyear period when networks of this nature were used to virtually dominate the Googlefront page. And all of this was entirely possible because SEO was a technically-driven,standalone discipline.

With the release of the Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird algorithm updates, Googlefundamentally transformed the SEO process. The Hummingbird update in particularwas not just a regular update like previous updates before it. In fact, it was a completerestructuring of the Google ranking algorithm that incorporated all of the mostpowerful updates before it, including Panda and Penguin.

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The Hummingbird algorithm introduced semantic search with Google+ at itscore, and this has transformed SEO into a socially-driven and complexamalgamation of processes. As a result, massive blog networks that weredesigned for the express purpose of manufacturing links are no longer effectiveon Google.

Google now uses artificial intelligence in its ranking algorithm. It stepped intoartificial intelligence with semantic search and the Knowledge Graph, and theiracquisition of the UK-based artificial intelligence outfit DeepMind for $400million has made Google even better at identifying manufactured links. As aresult, their effectiveness in search and the ranking algorithm is now light-yearsbeyond what it used to be.

Furthermore, with the incorporation of Google+ into Search, Google nowrequires everyone who uses their network to establish a visible and verifiableonline identity. This requirement has made it almost impossible (or at leastincredibly expensive) for spam to thrive on Google as was the case in the past.And while there's still a few black hat "success" stories out there, those thatwork are either extremely expensive or short lived.

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How Google Search hasFundamentally Changed

It is important to understand how the Google search process has changed. Infact, some SEO techniques that were perfectly acceptable in the past hasresulted in sites (including well established brands) being penalized and even de-indexed.

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Keywords

In the old world of SEO, Google was keyword-driven: keywords in your URLstructure, your metadata, your content, your links, etc. It was all aboutidentifying the exact search terms that your target audience were most likely totype, and then getting your site to rank as highly as possible for those terms.Relevance was established by looking for pages that have been optimized for thekeywords used in a search query.

Today, although keyword research is still important for SEO, Google search istopic or theme-driven, and no longer relies on keywords to establish relevanceto a search query.

Rather, semantic search uses artificial intelligence to understand the searcher’sintent and the “contextual” meaning of keywords being searched for. Itconsiders the entire query as a whole and then identifies the most “contextuallyrelevant” results for the search query, effectively moving from keyword-basedsearches to context-oriented searches.

Being theme-driven, Google’s algorithm is now better able to find and return the"most relevant" web pages to a particular search query, even if a particular webpage does not contain keywords used in the search query.

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Consequently, optimizing a webpage by writing keywords into thecontent is no longer sufficient atdetermining relevance to a searchquery if the algorithm deems thatthe page does not match thesearcher's intent.

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Links

The concept of using links as a way to measure a site’s importance was first made popular by Google with the implementation of its PageRank algorithm. In simple terms, each link to a web page is considered a vote for that page, and the page with the most votes wins.

The key to this concept is the notion that links represent an “editorial endorsement” of that web page, and search engines rely heavily on editorial votes to determine its relative importance.

However, although Google considers links to be the best metric for site quality, link analysis involves much more than simply counting the number of links a web page or website has.

All links are not created equal, and the number of links pointing to your site from socially popular, trusted and authoritative sites in your industry adds to your overall credibility, and increases the confidence that Google has in your website.

It is important to note however, that the major search engines still look at various attributes about a link in order to determine its relative value. These include:

Domain authority User engagement Trust Editorial integrity Content quality Relevance Anchor text

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Links are at the core of Google’s search algorithm, and link building is the most important off-page activity that can be used to increase the organic search ranking of your website.

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The Link Signature

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Since the Penguin update, all links have been getting more and more algorithmicscrutiny. When analysing a link, Google looks closely at the link signature with aview to negating any attempted manipulation of its algorithm through links thathave been acquired in a non-organic way.

Even links from an established, high ranking site could be discounted if thealgorithm is unable to understand the connection with the site it is linking to. Infact, Google has been known to penalize sites it suspects have been selling links.

It is really important to understand that, as far as Google is concerned, the processof link building itself is somewhat manipulative. Google views links as votes for yoursite’s credibility, vouching for your worthiness to rank highly in the search results.From this perspective, you can probably see why Google maintains that links to aparticular site must be “earned, not built”.

This was echoed by Google's webmaster trends analyst, John Mueller, in Februarywhen he warned that you shouldn’t be building links to your site. Now, Google isnot naïve enough to think that webmasters are never going to build links to theirsites. However, the fact remains that you need to be subtle and take extra carewhen building links.

And this means avoiding any overt link building practices that could lead Google toconclude that you’re manufacturing your popularity.

All things being equal, the actual amount of links you need in order to rank highly inthe Google search results will very much depend on the backlink profile of thecompetitors that are currently ranking above you in your industry-relevant SERP(search engine results page).

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Social Signals

Social signals serve as recommendations (or votes) cast by consumers. A socialsignal is generated every time a user likes or shares a particular piece of content,adds a comment, +1's a post, or tweets a link.

A slew of social signals to your content indicates that consumers believe theinformation shared on the page provides good value. Social media is extremelyimportant as a ranking signal because the search engines consider your authorityand influence on social networks and the level of engagement your contentreceives.

Each signal is an indication to the search engines that your target audienceconsiders your content to be of high-quality.

Note however, that social signals now get algorithmic scrutiny, and Google willalso look at a variety of metrics as a means of verifying the authenticity of yoursocial signals.

Some of the factors that Google takes into account when evaluatingsocial signals include:

How does the user interact with your website?

Does she mention it to her social connections?

Does she share any of its content after her first or subsequent visits to it?

Does she return to the site frequently or at all?

What type of personal digital profile does the user have?

Is the user known for that type of content or is that content irrelevant withwhat she does online generally?

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Keep in mind that Google has a treasure trove of data on each of its users, and itwill use this data to verify the authenticity and trustworthiness of the socialsignal.

Google uses Google+ as a primary source of information to gather all this data,but it also uses other data sources to cross-reference everything in an effort toflesh out the “identity” behind the social signal. All of this data is then used tocalculate a digital reputation score with the intent to gauge how much the socialsignal can be trusted.

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Today, Google prioritizes the quality of business offerings, the online visitorexperience and the perceived reputation and authority of a particular businessitself as much as it focuses on the traditionally technical aspects of search engineoptimization.

This means if you are looking to generate leads organically on Google search,you need to have a process-driven digital marketing strategy that goes beyondthe Google search query box.

A successful SEO strategy is one that is not purely reliant on just keywords andbacklinks, but incorporates the following key strategies. This list is not in order ofimportance:

On page SEO.

Technical SEO.

Brand.

Content marketing.

Social media optimization.

Mobile search optimization.

Online reputation management.

Video search optimization.

App search optimization.

Relationship building.

Link building.

User engagement.

Keyword optimization.

On-page optimization.

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