You’ve probably heard some funky so-called magic SEO tricks at one time or another; hidden links, cloaking, keyword stuffing, etc. Some of that might have worked in the past, but not anymore dear.
Google knows you’re cheating
Tricking Google has been possible for quite some time now, but it would have been foolish to think that all the big brains working there wouldn’t fix it all at one time or another. And they did.
Google constantly updates its search algorithms. In 2013, they released the Penguin algorithm, which not only understood the abusive techniques mentioned above, but would also start penalizing the sites using them.
They also just released Hummingbird a couple of months ago. It doesn’t affect SEO as much, but it shows Google’s high iteration frequency.
Play by the rules and create great content
So what’s a good way to optimize SEO then? Simple. Make good stuff. It doesn’t get simpler than.
Create the best possible unique content and serve it to your user in a well-formated markup while keeping a small page loading time. Make the website/webpage/article/etc. that you would like to visit as a user.
Of course, Google still cares about the SEO concepts you already know such as:
- A relevant
<h1>tag - Inbound and outbound links
- Good title
- Relevant
<meta description="..."> - ...
But it all just boils down to creating great content and not trying to trick Google.
Use your toolbox
CrakRevenue will provide you a handful of essential data about your business, revenue, geo-localisation, and much, much more. But, your toolbox could use some complementary tools as well.
Webmaster Tools
We've talked about Google's goal (and achievement) to put an end to cheap tricks; but, on the other end, they aim at providing to webmasters the tools they need to get their content promoted.
Your first stop should be Google's Webmaster Tools which provides great insights about how has Google's robots indexed your site and the adjustments you should make to improve you website SEO. It will also allow you to upload a sitemap for the crawlers to better understand your site.
You could give Bing and Yahoo's unified Webmaster Tools a spin as well as they share 12% of the search market.
Social Medias
Linking your site to social medias will definitely improve both SEO and traffic. Google+ especially, will greatly improve the way Google considers you. Google likes Google. Makes sense doesn't it?
Every social network has its own way of doing things, but it's mostly just a process of adding a couple of <meta> or <link> tags to your website.
- Facebook meta tags
- Google author meta tag
- Google publisher meta tag
- Twitter cards
- If you're using Wordpress, take a look at the great Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin.
Why you should care
SEO matters. Probably more than ever. The web is evolving in a way that users tend to rely more and more on search engines, especially since browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and now even Internet Explorer merged the address bar and the search bar.
People are not searching for websites anymore. They are searching for content, answers, value. That is the reason why you should care, you want them to get to your content.
CrakRevenue will help you monetize your traffic, don't you worry about that. But your part of the job? Get the traffic. Make content that'll be perceived as the best possible answer to a user search and the traffic will come by itself.
Modern SEO resources
- Kissmetrics blog, and especially the article 50 Reasons Your Website Deserves to Be Penalized By Google
- Moz blog
- Matt Cutts Blog
