What Google Wants In SEO for 2012

Filed under Google by on March 22, 2012 at 8:15 pm {no comments}

So we all have heard that a large SEO shakeup is in the works, where Google is going to target over optimized sites.  The question then becomes, what do they consider over optimized?

We think the better thing to ponder is what Google wants in SEO for 2012.  After all, every large scale change (and minor tweak) they make is with the goal of improving their search results to return the results they want.   Give them what they want and your site should do well.

For some perspective on why the continued changes, we can take a look at a piece by Aaron Friedman at Searchengineland that discusses this ‘over optimization’, and why it is such a tricky problem:

… if we think about the core goal of Search Engines, it has always been to give the best possible user experience. The search engines have done a fantastic job to date (more or less) to give us these results and deliver us relevant content. More information is being consumed today than ever before.

As time has progressed, SEO has evolved. As more people create and optimize content, content is becoming more “SEO’ed” than it is organic. The goal to enhance the user experience and stay relevant has been put in jeopardy. The nature and goal of SEO hasn’t changed, but the practice has evolved.

Yesterday’s keyword stuffing is just stupid. But it was a threat at one point. Today, it can sometimes be a fine line where we “over SEO-ify” our content. Engines are aware of this too and according to Matt Cutts, it will become something that could harm sites in the future.

This brings us to the problem. Search engines now need to combat overly optimized content with something else of value.

(read the rest of the story here)

 

So how are they going to combat overly optimized content with little value to the end user?  We’re not real sure about that, but if we focus on providing high quality content that is fresh and relevant, we are producing what Google wants and ultimately their rankings will reflect that.

Of course there will always be a place for SEO.  There are many things that can be done to help improve your off site metrics, and link building is central to that, but if it is not done in conjunction with improvement to your onsite content, you are not likely to see much benefit.  Our advice is to create high quality, authoritative content on a regular basis.  Make that your number one task, and then promote your site with quality promotional techniques.  As a basic game plan, this should be a winning long term strategy – find what Google wants in SEO and give it to them.

Please share this post if you found it useful, thank you!

What Google Wants in SEO

Filed under On Site Optimization by on March 21, 2012 at 11:55 pm {no comments}

For those paying attention, there is another large Google shakeup on the horizon.  For many site owners, this could spell trouble, but now is a great time to adjust your SEO campaign and give Google what they want.  The problem is that there are so many opinions on what they want, how are we to really know what Google wants in SEO?  Well, maybe they will just tell us.

Google has published the Google Search Engine Optimization Guide, which tells us exactly what they want.  Below is the table of contents from this guide that spells out very clearly what they want:

SEO Basics

Create unique, accurate page titles

Make use of the “description” meta tag

Improving Site Structure

Improve the structure of your URLs

Make your site easier to navigate

Optimizing Content

Offer quality content and services

Write better anchor text

Optimize your use of images

Use heading tags appropriately

Dealing with Crawlers

Make effective use of robots.txt

Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links

SEO for Mobile Phones

Notify Google of mobile sites

Guide mobile users accurately

Promotions and Analysis

Promote your website in the right ways

Make use of free webmaster tool

This is direct from Google, go read the full guide here.

So looking over this list we see them talking about page titles, description meta tags, site structure, URL structure, content, images, rotots.txt….  We are only about halfway through the topics, but you should be able to see a common theme here.  It is all discussing onsite content.

So a search engine optimization guide is put out by the very organization everyone wants to rank well for, telling us exactly what we need to do, but many webmasters don’t listen.  In the upcoming months there is likely to be a large shakeout in the search engine results, and the likely outcome of it is that sites following the guidelines that Google has set forth are going to benefit.

Now is the time to address your onsite issues.  Take a look at the Google guide here, and also take a look at our SEO guide.  You’ll find much of our guide is dedicated to the same things as the Google guide, with some details and examples to help you implement your changes.

We’ll be back soon and will be looking at some additional lessons we can learn from simply listening to what Google wants.  Please, if you found this article interesting, share it or like it!

Using Video for SEO

Filed under Video by on March 19, 2012 at 4:45 pm {no comments}

With all of the changes going on in the world of search, having video content on the web has never been more important.  Google loves video, and so do people.  It is engaging content that people will watch.  In this post we are going to go over the basics of using video for SEO.

When making your video, you want something short and very high quality.  2-3 minutes is a good length, but shorter videos will work as well.  People simply don’t have the attention span to watch videos that are much longer in length.  Give them what they want.

Once you have uploaded your video, the first thing we are going to look at is the title and description.  Just like when you optimize for your web pages, your title needs to be optimized for your video.  Be sure your keyword appears in the title, and keep your title to less than 66 characters.

Your description can be longer, a good rule of thumb is two or three sentences, and should also contain keywords and keyword variations.  Be sure to include a link to your main site in this description and try to include it as early on in the description as possible.

Next, add some tags to your video.  These are tags that will help tell YouTube what your video is about, and will help you get found by your target audience.  One thing you can do is search YouTube for popular videos in your niche and see what their title, description and tags are.  Don’t copy their work, but use it as a guideline for how you want to label your video.

Once your video is up, you need to promote it.  You can embed your video on your blog, your Squidoo page, etc.  Create a new post discussing the topic of the video and embed the video in that post.  Tweet a link to your video.  Post an update on your Facebook page.  Every time you publish a video, you should be promoting it across all of the sites we have already set up.

Also put your video on your site.  Putting video on your site is a great way to improve your on site statistics that Google likes to see.  One factor they are looking at these days is time visitors spend on your site.  If you have visitors coming and then staying to watch a full video, that is going to help this number quite a bit.  If you are new to video and don’t like how yours turned out, or if there is a better video out there, embed someone else’s video on your site.

If you are not familiar with video, this may seem like a daunting task, but your homework for this week is to get a video up on YouTube and promote it across the network of sites we have built up so far.  In addition, we want to get some video up on your main site, either your video or another video.  If adding video to your site does not fit your site structure, you can add it to your outside blog site instead (although having video on your main site somewhere is highly advised).

For those who are really uncomfortable with video, we have a low cost video creation service that you can take advantage of.  Check it out here:

http://www.seotacklebox.com/diy-seo/video-marketing

To use video for SEO purposes your video does not have to be cutting edge or of professional quality, it just has to be video!  Check back in, we’ll be looking at more ways you can improve your SEO efforts.

 

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