Some would say 2012 was a crusher of a year for search engine optimisation. The Google algorithm updates known as Penguin, Panda and Exact Match Domain let web masters know that low quality links and content were soon to be a thing of the past. Web sites with front page organic rank, plummeted overnight. So many sites took big hits, it became obvious very quickly that the rules had changed, in a very noticeable way. It’s interesting to note that the site owners and SEO companies seen screaming for leniency, were those who were promoting wafer-thin content and sporting inbound links from very ordinary pages which had no chances of even earning the briefest glance from a serious web surfer.
Some of the change-affected attributes of web sites were:
- low quality content
- low quality links in web site footers
- trying to leverage ranking power with exact keyword phrase domain names
When you take a moment, sit back and look at it all, you’ll soon realise what’s so obvious here.
The search engines are simply expecting the website owner to put the needs of the visitor first, an not try to write the content of the website to comply with an algorithm.
This might all seem like pretty basic stuff- but you’d be amazed at how many people believe that links are the be all, and end all of search engine optimisation.
The points we raise about factors affecting your web site seo still apply today, more than ever. The tolerance limits are narrower. If you’re wondering what this means, here it is:
Web masters and web site owners need to lift their game, raise the bar and provide better content and a better visitor experience in 2013 and beyond.
Do that, and the rank will happen.
In our work as a professional SEO Melbourne team, we have found, without doubt- that the one top currency of the web is not links, it is unique content, candidly presented, and relevant to the information the user seeks.
The more precisely you can target one tiny little piece of information per page on your web site, the higher your chance of that page doing well in the search engine results returned to the visitor for that query.
Of course, by now you know that the information can’t simply be spun or churned from somewhere else, it must be unique, and your credibility can be enhanced by using a number of options available to you, which will be the subject of another article one day.
So with the professional SEO community racing to bring stability and order back to clients’ web sites, the Google algorithm changes of 2012 really only yelled at us, telling us what we already knew.
It was time to lift our game, to educate our clients to present better quality content, to make it so irresistible to humans and search engines that when someone was directed to the content by a search engine results page, they were thrilled to bits at having been sent there and didn’t click the “Back” button in less than a heartbeat.
So what now for SEO in 2013?
I’ve no doubt that there will be more of the same.
To read more about what might lie in store for the SEO industry, our clients and internet users, see our article on the changing role of SEO in 2013. It will explain to you why your approach to SEO matters more now than it ever did before.