The truth about SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can at first be a daunting concept and a seemingly vague science.

It needn’t be.

SEO is one of those functions that easily get’s outsourced or shifted to a junior employee, as nobody really understands it or wants to deal with it.

A lot of focus has been placed by some SEO ‘practitioners’ to load pages packed with keywords in order to achieve higher SEO rankings. The idea is that the more you talk about what you do, sell or what your niche market is, the higher you will rank in search engines.

This is all good and well, but only up to a point. Having your targeted keywords in prominent positions within your content is important (just mind the keyword density!), as well as well defined Meta data and a robots.tx file and sitemap. This forms a part of good Search Engine Optimization Strategy.

However, all these activities fall under aspects of SEO which you can directly control. These form the aspects of SEO that you say about yourself.

Unfortunately, in SEO as in life, what you say about yourself isn’t really that important. It just isn’t very credible. The truth is:

What others say about you online is more important then what you say about yourself.

Let’s have a closer look at the Google algorithm:

When looking at the Google algorithm, it is clear that over 60% of your page rank as calculated by the Google algorithm is made up of activities that others perform online in response to your website:

• 23.87% – The general trust and authority that your site has as a result of quality incoming links. Google views a constant stream of incoming links as a sign that other people trust your site enough to not only link to you, but to link to you again.
• 22.33% – The amount of links coming into a specific page. The Reasoning: The more people link to you, the more widely respected your content.

It’s interesting to note that Google treats these two elements almost the same: consistency and credibility – This is why it is so important to blog continuously and create content that has meaning, not just mindless babble or senseless reposting.

• 20.26% – The anchor text of links from other sites (anchor text is the words used in the clickable portion of a link). This is how Google determines what other people say your content is about

How do you become credible enough to attract quality incoming links? By sparing a bit more focus and attention for SEO CopyWriting and giving more thought to the content you publish online.

Blog, tweet and update your social networks as much as you want, but be sure that your contribution to cyber space is of value to others.

It is important to remember that the Google Algorithm is a constantly shifting beast. Recent announcements have been made that they will once again make changes to the algorithm to combat content farms and the reproduction of content/resources, placing a bigger focus on original content.

I think we can all applaud that.

So when doing the SEO dance for your website, keep in mind that quality beats out quantity every time, and definitely in the long run.

You can hate on the Google Ranking Algorithm all you want, but at least it’s better than this.

Note: This blog was inspired by Brian Clark, one of the founders of Copyblogger and Scribe.

Also Read: Social Media’s impact on SEO