When we perform Search Engine Optimisation we’re not trying to improve the rankings of a website, we’re working to improve the websites sales by increasings its visibility online — there’s a difference.
Any SEO that simply aims to increase rankings is never going to give the results that it could do. You see, Google is a very complicated and intelligent beast and long gone are the days of ranking websites well by doing the following:
- Insert keyword X times on the page
- Adding keywords into the META Keywords Tag
- Making sure keyword density is at XYZ%
- Obtaining links with exact match anchor text to elevate rankings for that term
- Making sure your “Main Keyword” is in your domain name
Although this stuff is pretty old hat, I still regularly talk to businesses that run their SEO by using these old tactics (and more) or expect their SEO to follow a “Shopping list” of tactics that they expect equal number 1 rankings by a given date.
Truth is, it doesn’t work like this.
Google UNDERSTANDS
Google is doing a much better job of understanding semantics, it understands misspellings and it understands the topic of a webpage and what terms should produce that given page in search. You do not need to add every term exactly as it’s searched for in your copy.
I recently wrote a blog why Main Keywords are Not Your Main Keywords and spoke about the same at this years LincUpLive conference in Lincoln. What I described did shock a few people but with data to back it up – it makes perfect sense: Everyone searches differently. On top of that, with geographically biased and personalised search results many users see different search engine results pages. So even if you were number 1 for a term for you, you might not be for someone else.
So What Approach Should You Take.
There are lots of ways to increase your websites visibility and place it front of relevant customers via effective SEO. Your objective is to be visible for AS MANY SEARCH TERMS POSSIBLE, not just a handful of vanity terms. Given 20% of search queries have never been searched for before then this is essential or you are simply missing out. Add to this that 70% of search terms are long tail then it gives you an idea of the scale your SEO should take.
Visibility
Lets through another factor into it – voice search. Many search queries are getting longer (Long tail) and voice searches are usually more precise and quite detailed. You can use Voice Search on your computer (Google Chrome), your phone and even wearable technology such as Google Glass or Smart Watches. With the rollout in 4G voice search is fast, convenient and is becoming more prevalent.
So simply concentrating on broad 1 or 2 word terms means you’re missing out hugely.
Which is why content is important. Lots of good relevant content that is written for people and designed to inform, educate or entertain will help your site rank for more search terms including ones you’ve not even considered and help establish YOU as an authority (Set up Google Authorship). Back this up by studying your data via your Analytics package to improve your websites experience for users (by giving them what they want as fast as possible) then you are onto a real winner: More sales not just better rankings.
So if you’re considering SEO or looking for an SEO Agency then consider what you want, is it rankings or is it sales? I bet it’s the latter.
