As the successful entrepreneurs behind companies like Apple and Facebook inspire many of us, rates of entrepreneurship have been steadily rising. With the evolution of technology, like the internet, some of the biggest barriers to start ups have been lowered. These two factors have created an array of challenges including stiff competition digitally. How do you outshine the competition online?
Search engines such as Google, Bing, or Duck Duck Go have grown to help users wade through the millions of websites created over the last couple of decades. And, web surfers have become absolutely dependent on them. So, the race begins: how do you get your business website to the top of the list?!
The need to get to the top of the search results spawned a whole new industry: Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Since its inception, the SEO industry has gone through evolutions and revolutions. What certainly could be classified as a revolution started with Google’s Penguin update a few years ago. Suddenly, well ranking websites were buried. You couldn’t find them. And sites that were known, but not ranking at the time rose to the top.
Google’s new algorithm was rewarding quality more than simple, easy to manipulate meta data.
In the years since Penguin, it has begged a new question: is search engine optimization dead?
Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Dead?
Every year, someone claims to write off SEO as dying and or dead. This is TRUE, to some degree. Old-school, black-hat SEO has died. Why? Attempts to outsmart the search engines are ineffective and self-defeating as Google’s algorithms now look for keyword stuffing, link farms, and other unethical means of authority. Gone are the days when we can somehow manipulate the different search engines to ranks sites that don’t deserve top ranking.
With that said, let’s take a moment to get to the core of what true SEO means. True SEO avoids gaming the system and is the process of helping to facilitate a website to be more visible and easy to understand to search engines, but most importantly, is also useful to users.
SEO of the past was an ugly sight to behold: websites filled with only keywords and AdSense adds with no real content. That is dead, or at least is being buried by the search engines.
Nobody likes spam and search engines are no different. The changes that Google made have benefited SEO for good in that websites now have to actually produce good content and have good interaction with their fans (which is the way it should be).
No More Manipulative SEO
SEO works together with content production, social media engagement, and user interaction, to name a few examples, to create a unique brand for a company. This in turn signals to the search engines the topic(s) that this company has authority in, and will lead that brand to be found organically more often.
As such, we need to take the all-encompassing approach with SEO. This includes making changes to websites in our on-page SEO to make our intended topics clear to search engines with white hat methods. Which involves providing high quality, relevant and usable content to create a superior experience for the consumer.
It also means creating external links, by interacting with our fans, communities and industries to show legitimacy. Being recognized as a leader will also heal your bottom line in general.
So yes, the days of old-school, unethical SEO are over. You can’t rank for a keyword tomorrow by shipping a request to a link farm and filling your website with a keyword.
Your Site Can Benefit from Good SEO
But, you can build your ranking through an on-page and off-page SEO strategy that will both build your brand’s authority in both the eyes of your customers, and the search engines.
We would love to help you with that. Summation X is committed to helping small and large businesses do better in their online marketing. We specialize in SEO and digital marketing! If you need help to improve your online presence, contact us for a FREE marketing strategy review.