Following recent announcements from Google about its ever-evolving approach to ranking websites, businesses are faced with fresh challenges if they want to see their sites do well.
The techniques used in search engine optimization are constantly changing, so now is a good time to take stock and ask if old-fashioned marketing habits are doing more harm than good.
Google, as it has previously, is putting a lot of focus on what it calls "high quality content", but the notable thing is that its systems are getting better and better at identifying this. For some time now Google's systems have been able to identify automatically generated content on websites and have been downgrading them accordingly, which makes it all the more unfortunate that many businesses still use this approach to marketing.
The message that comes through most clearly from Google is that it is better to have a small amount of website content that scores highly than to go for a large-scale campaign built on automatically generated material or poor quality SEO work.
What Makes for Poor Quality Search Engine Optimization?
Google is increasingly focusing on the repetition of keyword phrases, which can be identified from meta tags or simply from their popularity in internet marketing more generally. Repeat these too often and content will score badly; similarly, content that contains an unnatural percentage of popular keywords, even if they are different from one another, is easy to identify as "cheating".
The Other Big Issue: Links
Since an increasing number of sites have been using links embedded in press releases to boost their rankings, Google has got wise and it is now safer to avoid this practice altogether. Link farms are problematic, as they have been for years, but increased sensitivity to this means that it is advisable not to ask for inclusion on a business partner’s links page. A single link embedded in a relevant article somewhere else on their website is a much better way to improve a search engine profile.
The most important factor in successful SEO is obtaining links from other sites that search engines regard as high quality; this usually means sites with a significant quantity of well-written content that is not overly focused on marketing.
Xcellimark specializes in helping its clients to access opportunities such as this and build up their online profiles in ways that focus on quality rather than quantity. For more information, contact Xcellimark at (888) 318-3950 ext.211.
