SEO - Truths and Myths
Website SEO (short for Search Engine Optimization) is passing rapidly from the margins to the mainstream. At the same time, the commonly accepted “old school” methods are modified in order to give a lasting result. The following article will present some trends in the field, giving us a better understanding of how it works and what you should do in order to improve your site. Next we will discuss the tools and methods that can be adapted to website promotion.
SEO is one of the most growing marketing methods on the Internet. Largely due to the many studies that support the findings that about two thirds of the user traffic originates in a search engine query.
No matter what you sell – a high ranking in the search results (the SERPs, an acronym for Search Engine Result Pages), is expected to increase traffic to your website and therefore increase your revenue. But this simple idea, which already at the beginning of this decade has been translated into professional SEO services money can buy, was understood by the managers and the webmasters only a few years ago.
Many organizations and businesses assign the task of promotion to the founder of the site or the one who maintains it on a regular basis. In many cases, this means that promotion is not done at all, or done unprofessionally, which can be ineffective and even harmful. On the other hand, on the SEO services market, there are quite a few companies, large and small alike, which are mere charlatans.
To sum this up, this issue is important enough to interest any manager, site builder, or anyone who owns a website. Contrary to what one might think, SEO is not in too complicated. And in the following articles, we try to understand what drives it forward today, the principles and methods that shape it, and most important, what you can do with this information to get more visitors.
SEO is one of the most growing marketing methods on the Internet. Largely due to the many studies that support the findings that about two thirds of the user traffic originates in a search engine query.
No matter what you sell – a high ranking in the search results (the SERPs, an acronym for Search Engine Result Pages), is expected to increase traffic to your website and therefore increase your revenue. But this simple idea, which already at the beginning of this decade has been translated into professional SEO services money can buy, was understood by the managers and the webmasters only a few years ago.
Many organizations and businesses assign the task of promotion to the founder of the site or the one who maintains it on a regular basis. In many cases, this means that promotion is not done at all, or done unprofessionally, which can be ineffective and even harmful. On the other hand, on the SEO services market, there are quite a few companies, large and small alike, which are mere charlatans.
To sum this up, this issue is important enough to interest any manager, site builder, or anyone who owns a website. Contrary to what one might think, SEO is not in too complicated. And in the following articles, we try to understand what drives it forward today, the principles and methods that shape it, and most important, what you can do with this information to get more visitors.
The Changing Nature of SEO
Any serious discussion on SEO should start from breaking some of the myths rooted around the topic, which often represent an anachronism, partial knowledge and even disinformation.
First, it is important to understand: SEO is not a substitute for marketing and cannot sell a bad product, sold through a bad website. Promotion increases the traffic to the site. What the visitors will do when they come to the site depends on who are the users and what the site itself can offer. In any case, the search engine website promotion should be part of a broader marketing campaign, which includes using traditional methods (advertising, public relations, etc.) coupled with tools of internet marketing (viral marketing, advertising, sponsored results, etc.).
Second, SEO is not a selling tool, and is not meant only for those who want to sell, but for anyone who wants to increase traffic to his site. Even a non-profit organization that seeks to recruit volunteers, for example, would benefit from good locations in SERPs for keywords related to the company's activities.
Third, promotion in search engines is not the essence of everything. A customer should be able to reach the website from other important channels as well: referrers from other sites, typing the address in the browser window, and so on.
First, it is important to understand: SEO is not a substitute for marketing and cannot sell a bad product, sold through a bad website. Promotion increases the traffic to the site. What the visitors will do when they come to the site depends on who are the users and what the site itself can offer. In any case, the search engine website promotion should be part of a broader marketing campaign, which includes using traditional methods (advertising, public relations, etc.) coupled with tools of internet marketing (viral marketing, advertising, sponsored results, etc.).
Second, SEO is not a selling tool, and is not meant only for those who want to sell, but for anyone who wants to increase traffic to his site. Even a non-profit organization that seeks to recruit volunteers, for example, would benefit from good locations in SERPs for keywords related to the company's activities.
Third, promotion in search engines is not the essence of everything. A customer should be able to reach the website from other important channels as well: referrers from other sites, typing the address in the browser window, and so on.
Ecology of Search Engine Optimization
The large number of concepts and buzzwords related to this field may confuse those unfamiliar with the topic. For example, in various books and articles written on the subject, you will often find the term SEO replaced with the term SEM (an acronym for Search Engine Marketing), or other, more general terms, such as Internet Marketing.
Besides search engine optimization, there are specific areas of expertise in online marketing, such as the already mentioned viral marketing, forum marketing, social marketing and more. There are also professionals who specialize in online advertising and/or in bidding on search terms, or analyzing "conversion rates" (percentage of registering/buying users).
The general attitude today is not to try to get more visitors “by force”, but to create "quality inputs" of users, who belong to specific target audiences that site owners want to reach - whether they are people who will buy their products, potential employees or people to join a community they're creating.
Some promotion and marketing methods were abandoned in favor of more "natural" methods, which view the site as part of an ecosystem. Effective promotion of the site will generally be a part of an online community of public and private sites, professional to some extent or another, related to the niche in which the website operates.
Accordingly, today's SEO tends to reflect marketing insights, stemming from an analysis of the market, identifying audiences, definition of the added value, and the product that website offers. On the other hand, promotion becomes increasingly aware of the need to establish the website's relationship with other factors, belonging to its ecosystem.
Besides search engine optimization, there are specific areas of expertise in online marketing, such as the already mentioned viral marketing, forum marketing, social marketing and more. There are also professionals who specialize in online advertising and/or in bidding on search terms, or analyzing "conversion rates" (percentage of registering/buying users).
The general attitude today is not to try to get more visitors “by force”, but to create "quality inputs" of users, who belong to specific target audiences that site owners want to reach - whether they are people who will buy their products, potential employees or people to join a community they're creating.
Some promotion and marketing methods were abandoned in favor of more "natural" methods, which view the site as part of an ecosystem. Effective promotion of the site will generally be a part of an online community of public and private sites, professional to some extent or another, related to the niche in which the website operates.
Accordingly, today's SEO tends to reflect marketing insights, stemming from an analysis of the market, identifying audiences, definition of the added value, and the product that website offers. On the other hand, promotion becomes increasingly aware of the need to establish the website's relationship with other factors, belonging to its ecosystem.
Age of Search Engine Optimization
Following the brilliance of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google has become the best and world's most popular search engine, that ranks sites according to links from other websites they receive.
In the past, a large number of backlinks (inbound links) was a sure way to get good rankings. Google's algorithm today is much more complicated, and includes more than 200 different parameters that define the relevance and importance of a site or page specific query.
Google invests considerable resources in the discovery and eradication of the algorithm attempts to trick it, and occasionally makes changes that makes certain promotion methods obsolete. Google actually encourages SEO - It's an industry that is part of its ecosystem. Therefore, it provides administrators and SEO specialists with information and relevant tools. On the other hand, Google tries to ensure that promotion will be ethical, abide by its rules, and without dirty tricks.
The organic approach (Organic SEO) concentrates on consistency, ease of navigation, and proper grammar. The idea is to make more changes on the site itself (On page), and make it attractive to the communities that will promote the website from outside (Off page).
For example: offer content and tools that make other sites link to your website (Link Baiting), and increase the number of returning visitors. Enable content syndication in RSS and other ways (PR sites, articles sites, etc.), create some level of integration with social networks to enjoy their viral nature.
Promotion principles emphasize on the one hand, that the integrity, navigation logic and high performance, will make the site more accessible both to users and search engines, and on the other hand - create added value and a healthy ecosystem around the website.
Such an approach meets Google's main demand: it puts the visitor in the center, the site provides real value of its own, and promotes its content without abusing the surfers or the search engines. Experience has shown that organic promotion achieves better results in the long run because it doesn't become obsolete due to changes in algorithms.
In the past, a large number of backlinks (inbound links) was a sure way to get good rankings. Google's algorithm today is much more complicated, and includes more than 200 different parameters that define the relevance and importance of a site or page specific query.
Google invests considerable resources in the discovery and eradication of the algorithm attempts to trick it, and occasionally makes changes that makes certain promotion methods obsolete. Google actually encourages SEO - It's an industry that is part of its ecosystem. Therefore, it provides administrators and SEO specialists with information and relevant tools. On the other hand, Google tries to ensure that promotion will be ethical, abide by its rules, and without dirty tricks.
The organic approach (Organic SEO) concentrates on consistency, ease of navigation, and proper grammar. The idea is to make more changes on the site itself (On page), and make it attractive to the communities that will promote the website from outside (Off page).
For example: offer content and tools that make other sites link to your website (Link Baiting), and increase the number of returning visitors. Enable content syndication in RSS and other ways (PR sites, articles sites, etc.), create some level of integration with social networks to enjoy their viral nature.
Promotion principles emphasize on the one hand, that the integrity, navigation logic and high performance, will make the site more accessible both to users and search engines, and on the other hand - create added value and a healthy ecosystem around the website.
Such an approach meets Google's main demand: it puts the visitor in the center, the site provides real value of its own, and promotes its content without abusing the surfers or the search engines. Experience has shown that organic promotion achieves better results in the long run because it doesn't become obsolete due to changes in algorithms.
Methods That Do Not Work
Link Exchange (Reciprocal Linking), method of promotion that was very popular in the past, becomes less and less effective. Google's engine can recognize such links, as well as sponsored links and ads. The algorithms can find the difference between Luxury Link on Yahoo's directory and a link from a directory that nobody ever heard of.
Links from the open directory, DMOZ, which have once been considered very lucrative, became less so in the last few years due to large numbers of low quality websites that made their way into the directory's index. On the other hand, links from Wikipedia are tagged “no follow” nowadays, a tag that recommends the search engine to ignore them. On the bright side, nobody can really say whether Google follows this recommendation.
Generally, that helps you to bring real visitors to the website and will also help you to promote it in the search engines, especially Google. The search giant has never admitted it, but most experts agree: Google uses the Google Toolbar in order to estimate the real traffic to sites and properties (while staying on the site, number of pages that users visit, the number of subscribers to your RSS, and more).
In other words: If a link does not bring you visitors, it probably wouldn't improve your ranking on Google. Similarly, a hundred of esoteric search engines that don't bring you traffic won't promote you in Google's search results. And naturally, if you manage a spam site, visitors will leave it immediately (Bounce), and Google can recognize that.
It is best to assume that all the methods that automatically generate links or content are not long-term sustainable, and even harmful. The wisdom, in organic promotion and in general, is to be creative and work respecting the rules and ethics, or as Google calls it: "do only things you will not feel uncomfortable about when you will have to explain them."
Replication or stealing website content do not work. On the other hand, user-generated content, forums and games that increase the volume of unique content, links, traffic and the time surfers spend on the site – do work. Creating multiple identical sites is revealed by Google pretty quickly. On the other hand, a wise and balanced use of text labels (Tags), not only increases the number of pages on the site and the inner movement inside, but also contributes to usability.
Links from the open directory, DMOZ, which have once been considered very lucrative, became less so in the last few years due to large numbers of low quality websites that made their way into the directory's index. On the other hand, links from Wikipedia are tagged “no follow” nowadays, a tag that recommends the search engine to ignore them. On the bright side, nobody can really say whether Google follows this recommendation.
Generally, that helps you to bring real visitors to the website and will also help you to promote it in the search engines, especially Google. The search giant has never admitted it, but most experts agree: Google uses the Google Toolbar in order to estimate the real traffic to sites and properties (while staying on the site, number of pages that users visit, the number of subscribers to your RSS, and more).
In other words: If a link does not bring you visitors, it probably wouldn't improve your ranking on Google. Similarly, a hundred of esoteric search engines that don't bring you traffic won't promote you in Google's search results. And naturally, if you manage a spam site, visitors will leave it immediately (Bounce), and Google can recognize that.
It is best to assume that all the methods that automatically generate links or content are not long-term sustainable, and even harmful. The wisdom, in organic promotion and in general, is to be creative and work respecting the rules and ethics, or as Google calls it: "do only things you will not feel uncomfortable about when you will have to explain them."
Replication or stealing website content do not work. On the other hand, user-generated content, forums and games that increase the volume of unique content, links, traffic and the time surfers spend on the site – do work. Creating multiple identical sites is revealed by Google pretty quickly. On the other hand, a wise and balanced use of text labels (Tags), not only increases the number of pages on the site and the inner movement inside, but also contributes to usability.
It's Easy to Forget
When comparing the performance of competing websites in search engines, it is easy to see that sometimes publishers who receive the best rankings are not those who promote massively, but those who have simple sites that were built "by the book" - normal, standard, light, simply decorated, and hosted on servers with short load times.
"By the book" means, among other things, a logical hierarchy of pages on the site, where each page is located in a maximum of 2-3 clicks from the home page. It means using a sitemap, robots.txt file, and everything that the HTML proposes to allow an integration of keywords (including the Title tag, Alt Image Tag, Img Title Tag, Meta Description Tag, Meta Keywords Tag, H1 font, etc.).
That means a different title for each page, using keywords in headlines (H1) and intermediate headings (H2, H3), with most probable frequency (1.5 to 3 percent by - at all) in the text. That means short paragraphs and accents (Bold text). Add to the above two years' or more on the network, and you'll have a site that search engines like.
It's no secret that there are technologies that may interfere with promotion, such as Ajax, JavaScript, Frames or Flash. You're allowed to use them, but you should know how to compensate with content.
Contrary to the impression sometimes created, promotion should not dictate where and how the site will evolve or how it would look. In fact, successful promotion comes down to the following: An untrained eye would not notice it's there, and yet users will not stop coming.
"By the book" means, among other things, a logical hierarchy of pages on the site, where each page is located in a maximum of 2-3 clicks from the home page. It means using a sitemap, robots.txt file, and everything that the HTML proposes to allow an integration of keywords (including the Title tag, Alt Image Tag, Img Title Tag, Meta Description Tag, Meta Keywords Tag, H1 font, etc.).
That means a different title for each page, using keywords in headlines (H1) and intermediate headings (H2, H3), with most probable frequency (1.5 to 3 percent by - at all) in the text. That means short paragraphs and accents (Bold text). Add to the above two years' or more on the network, and you'll have a site that search engines like.
It's no secret that there are technologies that may interfere with promotion, such as Ajax, JavaScript, Frames or Flash. You're allowed to use them, but you should know how to compensate with content.
Contrary to the impression sometimes created, promotion should not dictate where and how the site will evolve or how it would look. In fact, successful promotion comes down to the following: An untrained eye would not notice it's there, and yet users will not stop coming.
Recommended Resources
- Matt Cutts Blog - The official SEO speaker for Google
- SEO Tips for Beginners – Great, down to earth tutorials for both beginners and specialists.
- Google Webmasters Center - A must for those who build sites and those who promote them.