Link exchanges, guest blog posts, and articles distribution websites are all taking a toll on search engine rank for any website owner who participated in these schemes. Google is fiercely devaluing and even manually penalizing websites for what were once common practices in the SEO market. In October 2013, Google took away 80% of keyword data from Google Analytics. No longer can you purely focus on keywords, but you have to analyze landing page data and look at the user experience. If you don’t change your approach to SEO, you’re risking severe penalties that can take a year to recover from.
Has Google Really Changed Its Rules?
Most SEO experts accuse Google of playing mind games when they change the rules of search engine optimization. Google has always said to create websites that are informative and useful to users. If your SEO goals are to focus on search engines and rankings and forget the user experience, the consequences of those goals will soon catch up with you. This year, Matt Cutts, head of Google Spam, stated the fall of guest blogging. Google also mentioned link schemes will be penalized. Focus on user experience and you won’t have to worry about being penalized.
Old Marketing: White Hat SEO That Really Isn’t
White hat SEO is considered the angelic, good form of online marketing. Black hat SEO is believed to be filled with spammers and hackers, but many people that call themselves “white hat SEO experts” also participate in link schemes that can get websites filtered by the Penguin algorithm update. For instance, it was common practice to submit press releases with keyword rich anchor text as a backlink within the content. What website owners forgot to ask themselves was whether their site was actually newsworthy. Press releases became the new article marketing technique, which when not used properly, will get your website penalized by Google. Unless you have something newsworthy, you don’t need a press release.
Backlinking is another tricky subject in the space. Backlinks are admittedly an important part of the core search engine algorithm, but think of links as votes for your website. When you place backlinks yourself, you’re voting for yourself, which is against the rules. Imagine in politics, if the prime minister or president could manipulate the system and vote for themselves. The citizens would be highly unsatisfied if they found the leader wasn’t the most genuinely voted. The same applies to Google, if a website ranks well, but isn’t worthy of the position, people will usually be unsatisfied with the result and usually bounce back to the SERPs and click other results. This process is often referred to as the Pogosticking Effect.
Backlinks show your popularity, but SEO has evolved into backlink spam instead of what it’s supposed to do – bestowing votes of confidence. Google says website owners should gain links naturally, but how do you get backlinks with no visibility? There is no exact formula, however most of the time SEO revolves around content marketing, which involves writing unique and insightful content and promotion.
Don’t Forget Web Design
Web design is a very important part of SEO. Web design was once considered a separate initiative from SEO, outside of standard title and meta tag optimization. Now, web design and SEO are converging. Web design helps engage users, and SEO experts are aware of the importance of keeping users on the website.
There are several tools on the market that can help you track visitors and user behaviour patterns. Instead of counting the number of visitors you get from search engines, consider conversions as your main Key Performance Indicator (KPI) and how well your content engages users. Throwing web copy together without a content plan is no longer a viable option. Google Panda update was intended to mitigate poor content websites and devalues websites that are seen as such. Simply, a poorly written content with spammy backlinks destroys a website rank.
You can review content from user metrics, such as bounce rate, time on site, reactions from users and so on. User behaviours are always hard to understand, because they often depend on demographics, current trends and personal preferences. However, you should be able to identify behaviour on your site using tools such as Google Analytics. Do users click links to read more? Do they browse products? Do they watch your videos? While Google admits that it does not use bounce rate or Google Analytics data to determine rank, the algorithms can use the pogostick effect to determine how happy the visitor was.
One pattern Google picked up was user disinterest in ad-heavy sites. The Google page layout algorithm devalues sites with too many ads above the fold. Ad placement was once a part of on-site SEO, and it still is an important ranking factor. Except now ads must be non-intrusive and below the web page fold.
Conclusion
SEO hasn’t really changed much. What has changed is Google actively policing links and web content. Panda and Penguin require SEO experts to follow the rules and avoid the common tactics that were used to manipulate search results. If you’ve participated in any of these schemes and has not been penalized, you’re one of the lucky ones.
If you’re currently focusing on search engines rather than users, it’s time to take a different approach to SEO.
Adam Rowles always has his eyes on the search engine market. An avid writer, he enjoys sharing his innate insights with others on the web. Look for his informational articles on SEO and online marketing.
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