The SEO landscape shifts again. And again.
SEO (search engine optimisation) is the ever-changing art and science of creating websites that are designed and written to attract as much relevant traffic as possible from search engines like Google. It’s all about ranking as highly as possible for search terms people use.
And the latest changes to the SEO landscape have important implications for us all.
Website content and the SEO mix
As a copywriter, I focus on content-led SEO elements. Headlines. Page content. Page descriptions. Title tags. All the stuff that people and search engines read.
However, it’s estimated that content only accounts for 20-30% of a website’s SEO profile or ranking performance.
There are a whole bunch of other elements that influence the way search engines view your website and rank its relevance and importance – factors like back links and the age of your site come in to play.
How search engines have changed
Back in the internet’s formative years, when search engines were in their infancy, you could simply stuff your website full of keywords and rank highly without a second thought about the quality of the information on your site.
Today, your site would be penalised for ‘keyword stuffing’.
Search engines are now super-smart. They know that, if they want people to use their search functions, they have to give people the most useful and relevant information – high quality content that’s delivered as quickly and intelligently as possible.
As such, the algorithms that search engines use to assess websites are now incredibly sophisticated. And they change on an almost daily basis, continually tweaked and refined to view and appraise websites as humans do.
Perhaps then, it’s little wonder that the latest research into search engines and the way they weight various website elements shows that the focus is shifting once again, placing the onus squarely on usefulness.
Putting your visitors first
It’s long been understood that usability issues – such as the speed a website loads – can impact on SEO performance and ranking.
Now though, other use-focused elements are increasingly taking precedence. I’m talking about things like click-through rates; the amount of time people spend on a page or site; and bounce rates (the percentage of people who immediately hit the back button or click away from a page).
In short, search engines are focusing on analytics and indicators that show people – real people, not search engine robots – actually find the content useful.
The moral to the story
What does all this mean? It means that, while the SEO landscape is constantly changing, one thing remains the same – the search engines’ desire to give people what they want and need.
So forget about all those old fashioned SEO tricks you’ve heard about. Don’t try to con the search engines. They’re too clever. Instead, do the right thing by your business and visitors to your site. Provide the best, most useful, most relevant information in the most apt and user-friendly way you can.
If you do that, your site’s SEO performance should take care of itself.
Guest blogger Paul Leonard is the co-founder of Caboodle Copywriting, a team of freelance website copywriters in Australia.