Moving SEO forward into the future

[Micha12]

Relatively new to the forum, but I wanted to contribute and get some feedback from others. SEO makes people feel as though they are cruising along the highway when suddenly there is a roadblock there out of the blue that was not there before. Just because you were cruising along with SEO before does not mean that you will have success if you do not change or adapt.

If you are too progressive, people lump you in with the Blackhat SEO types, if you too conservative you will lose search traffic to your competition. I wanted to share some of the latest stuff that was revealed in Google’s latest algorithm updates. I hope that you will be able to use these insights for your own website.

Google defines quality – not us
Even though this seems unfair to many people, Google is the one who decides whether something is quality content. Far too often do people create a ‘quality website,’ but that is their own vision of what quality is. You may find that your traffic tanks, your impressions drop, and you are left to wonder what happened. Google decides what quality is based on Google’s quality guidelines. Just because we love what we write does not mean anything.

Is keyword searching dead?
The way that Google analyzes keywords to determine the most relevant web pages is one of the largest changes in the last 12 months. Google’s query syntax is heavily influenced by the increase of voice search. The reason behind this is that Google wants to do better at conversational search.

This means that Google tries to “understand the gist” of what people are looking for, meaning that longer queries REDUCE the pages that match your search. Does Google’s interpretation mean that keyword search is a thing of the past? Of course not. It has been and continues to be a way to find what people want on the Internet. However, Google is trying to find the best answer to the question that people are asking – not just the best keyword results.

Moving forward
The SEO field saw a number of transitions in 2013. It transformed into a more holistic approach of making sure content is very high quality after first utilizing a nuts-and-bolts page architecture and formatting method. One of the best things is that Google Webmaster Tools will now help you understand possible mistakes better than ever before. This means it is easier than ever for us to see what Google’s framework for a “high quality” website may be.

What about you guys, do you have any experiences after being hit hard with a Google update? How do you feel about these new approaches? Do you think that it makes your job easier or harder?