If you’ve been around internet marketing for any length of time, you’ll be aware that search engine optimisation (SEO) is truly a minefield. You may have been stung in the past by an SEO company that promised the world and didn’t deliver, and you probably get regular offers in your email inbox from SEO companies in India etc offering to get your website onto page 1 of Google.
The truth is, SEO as it used to be practised, is effectively dead and buried. I’ve just watched a fascinating video by Corey Burke, which you can view here. It is entitled ‘The Practice Formerly Known as SEO’. The title is slightly tongue-in-cheek but nevertheless accurate.
So, what are we to do if SEO is effectively dead? How can you get loads of targeted, organic traffic to your website while staying clear of Google’s filters and penalties?
The new SEO
- Don’t buy links
- Only natural links are allowed
- No linking schemes (blog networks etc)
- No “manipulation” of ranking
- 100% unique content
- Write to add value for humans (not for Google’s bots)
Actually, when you look at the list above, nothing is really “new”. In fact, back in 2002 Ken Evoy wrote a great classic called “Make Your Site Sell”. Evoy’s advice on SEO was pretty much exactly in line with the list above. So, we’ve just come full circle. Commonsense has prevailed, as Google has got smarter and has started enforcing the rules that it always stated in its SEO guidelines.
One thing that didn’t exist in 2002, and hence not mentioned by Ken Evoy, is social media – Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter being the key players.
So, you need to create great content that adds value to the Internet and post it to your website/blog and social media. That, in a nutshell, is the new SEO. And if you do it correctly and consistently, it works!
P.S. It’s worth noting the leading online SEO community – SEO Moz – recently changed its name to just Moz. Apparently they’ve read the writing on the wall.