What’s next for Search Engine Optimisation?

Now that’s a question! I am often asked about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and the other day I even had to give an internal company talk on it to one of our clients.  But it really got me thinking what is next for SEO?

The three rules are:

1. Fresh Content – you need to keep adding new and interesting content to your website – if only for Google to read it.
2. Well liked content – getting others to link, review or like your content is a winning endorsement for Google to appreciate you.
3. Well made website – fast loading, good code, efficient technology all good to give a thumbs up to Google.

My only real comment on Search Engine Optimisation me to say there is nothing I can do for a client that they cannot do themselves.  Take the popularity of WordPress and you have an instant website that is well made, has all the sharing what-nots to get liked and allows you to add content by the dozen.  What’s left for us to do!

I would agree that we can save time, making the website top-notch for you and giving you all the ‘tools’ to get people liking it, but we’re starting to show our weaknesses if we’re having to produce the content especially on subjects we do not know or understand – that bit still has to come from you the client, or rather it will all work much better if it comes from you the Client.

Brief History of Search Engine Optimisation

In the beginning no-one cared, then Yahoo and Google arrived and it was easy – we could just add a few keywords to a special bit of the website and hey presto there we were, but then it became more complicated:

Blogs

• You had a website – it stated what you did, add a pretty photo and that’s about all you needed.  The only thing that really changed in your business was a price or possibly the occasional staff member.
• To make the content Fresh – News came along, an explosion of ‘Latest News’ links can still be found on many websites – especially the more static sort of business where really nothing about the business changed that often.
• Blogs made their entry when News couldn’t be found.  Businesses first struggled to find news about themselves, but now they could write what they liked on anything they liked within the confines of a blog.

The good news is: It worked – companies have had to share information on their offerings far more than ever before, reading news and blogs on a company will tell you a lot about them before you buy.  Alternatively companies that don’t have news or blogs can perhaps be regarded as behind the times or struggling.

Reviews

• UGC – User Generated Content – after exhausting all means of writing their own content, businesses turned to their customers.  One of the great false economies of buying anything online, is that now instead of the company doing all the work, the customer had to.  Think flight booking, or whenever you have to enter credit card details.
• Google has loved Reviews – here were genuine customers leaving genuine comments about the products or service they had brought.  If the comments where good then that must mean the website is worth promoting as far as good was concerned.
• Star ratings came along for quicker and easier measurements of the quality of a product or service.  You really wouldn’t buy a 1 star product.

The good news is: Google has responded with strict guidelines on Reviews, steps are taken to ensure they are genuine, and companies that respond positively to negative reviews are given a big boost in Google rankings.

Links

• Linking – Google said – a website must be good if people link to it – and this created a flurry of useless websites all linking to a specific one… the more links you had then the better your website must be.
• Reciprocal Linking – Google said – hang on all this linking is being abused – now you had to give a link back to get the benefit, people found they had pages of their website dedicated to links to other websites, it became quite messy
• Authoritative Linking – Finally Google said – OKay you need a decent link – now you need someone just like you or interested in the same things as you to link to you.  It’s a bit like asking bar owners to advertise each others bars – much harder, but equally you can see it makes more sense.
• Link Penalties – Google also said – if you have dodgy links we’ll penalise you – by now some websites had thousands of weird and wonderful links to sort out.

The good news is: Google has sorted out linking at last – a decent referral from a specialist source really is worth it’s weight in gold.  The context and quality of traffic is well rewarded by Google, but getting those links remains an effort.

Build

• In the beginning HTML was HTML, easy and sweet, but people wanted more, images, animations, all singing and dancing websites where a frequent phase even we used here at NComp@ss.
• Then JavaScript came along to really mess up our code, websites were turning messy and Google couldn’t read them with missing content, images Google couldn’t understand and so on.
• Semantic Code was a phase popularly referred to.  The idea was you could have all the mess, but when it was finally shown on the Internet, it had to be clear concise and readable by Google
• Googles Rules – Fast, efficient, and easy to understand – if a website follows these rules it will be boosted on Google.

The good news is: the rise of easy to use Platforms. Everything from WordPress to Shopify, Wix to Magento has had to seriously consider the SEO implications in order to survive as a platform.  Custom made websites have a lesser place these days, but if made properly can still compete on Google with even the biggest outfits.

So what is next?

Your website has News, a Blog, you’re launching new products, new services, staff are changing or the business is growing, you’ve got people like us to help with SEO, you’re even Facebooking and Twittering, you’ve been around for donkeys and have plenty of links, customer can leave reviews and you’re also listed on Yelp, Yell and any other freebie website, the website is up to scratch and someone is in charge of it all.  What’s next?

• More of the same? – really? – do you really need to be posting more stuff?   It’s hard work and exponentially less effective.  it can’t be bad, but sure there is something better.Yes – sadly we have to recommend this course of action, more work
• Reviews are Hot! – Google is putting big emphasis on Reviews at the momentYes – But be clever where you get Reviews – Here is a list of Google Approved Partners.
• On-Site Actions – throw the problem back at your Web Developer – get them to work on Speed of the website, URL’s, Page ConstructionYes maybe this is the next big thing.  Making the website work faster, but also adding more ‘actionable points’ so Google pick ups Conversions and customer satisfaction

Really the question What’s Next for Search Engine Optimisation needs to be answered by all of us.  We need to be constantly on the look out, 2015 and 2016 have so far been years of consolidation rather than innovation in this field.  Facebook has made it’s land grab and new risers are fewer in ‘general terms’ especially in the uselessness of a standard company website.  Uber and AirBnB are not going to help us.

I would love to hear feedback from anyone reading this blog as to what they thought was the next big thing in Search Engine Optimisation.

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