No More Ranking for SEO
It’s happened and good riddance, one of SEO’s most false statistics is being binned, slowly and gradually the Search Engine Optimisation world is moving forward.
It’s an inherent problem that humans deal with, as soon as something looks good – The Internet – we look for ways to control it, and controlling it equals holding it back. Luckily we’re in a very fast moving industry and the controls are short lived.
I am talking about Ranking… the original question on everyone’s lips was ‘How do I get to No. 1 on Google’ this question has been around for at least 10 years – if not longer. Originally all people cared about was when they put in their name – they wanted to be number one.
Then people wanted ‘their keyword’ to make their website appear top of the list… Then they started registering ‘their-keyword.com’ just so that they could get to the top of Google, the world went mad.
But business caught on and we all realised that being in poll position on Google was extremely important and it still is. In fact an entire industry was built up around this concept. Who has not had the phone call, email, text, or fax even…
However, Rankings is flawed and has been from the start. You focus on your keyword – wow, Christmas Trees – you get 1000 visitors, three sales and an enquiry – it works… but what about all the hundreds of other combinations, green Christmas, Xmas trees, non-drop Christmas trees – it’s beyond us to think of the hundreds or thousands of potential keywords. And two problems occur – firstly we probably can’t be number one for all of then and secondly we almost certainly cannot manage all this work/effort.
Google knows this, as far as Google is concerned the entire SEO industry is an accident, the more people try to fiddle their results, the more Google’s result become corrupted and less effective. The two are at odds with each other. Google in now in the full swing of a fight back.
So we’ve turned the whole thing around… what counts is ‘Goals’, ‘Conversions’, ‘Engagement’, and ultimately your content. If you provide the answer to what people are looking for Google will make sure they reach you.
Goals
These are the reasons you have the website. An easy assessment if you have an e-Commerce website – but Goals are harder to measure if you are a services based company.
But if anything happens in 2013 – you should seriously consider what your Goals on for your website. I mean just ask yourself – what is the website for.
Conversions
These are the real turn point interactions on your website,. from an enquiry form to a Sales and revenue being generated.
Engagement
Less formal than goals, but none-the-least hugely important, whose talking about you? where? are you responding? if you are updating a Blog is anyone contributing, are people leaving product reviews. We’re furiously adding things to our website – is anyone reading it?
Content
It all comes done to content in the end. Google’s mission has always been to organise the worlds data and make it accessible, insert a keyword into search and your website should appear. But you must provide the answers to the question people are asking. Content is King.
==================
Why does is all matter? Because people are finding your website in more and more ways than ever, iPads, iPhone, Mobile, Desktop, at work, home, via Facebook, Twitter, Yell, Bing, your location, your interests, your lifestyle and demographic.
No two results are the same… if you look at your colleagues computer, the search results will be different to if you look at home, or on your mobile. Similar maybe – but definitely different.
So trying to rank your website on Google for a particular keyword is shockingly naive and impractical.
I have stopped supporting IE6 and IE7 in my website design efforts and focus on making sure websites work on Mobiles instead… The same is true of Ranking within SEO, we all need to focus on Results and not Rankings.
If you have questions please ask away…