The Constantly Evolving Search Engine Optimization Landscape

The ‘new’ SEO process involves a well-balanced marketing plan involving integrated strategies.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has evolved greatly over the years with the majority of the changes coming in the past couple years. The old days of manipulating search engine rankings via “keyword-stuffing” and “content farm”-ing are long gone. The new age of search engine optimization includes quality content by credible authors and promotion of your website, products, and services via industry relevant websites. Google waged war on old “black-hat” tactics that manipulated search engine rankings by allowing websites to essentially buy their way to the top of the rankings. They did this with mass amounts of poor content and keyword-rich anchor text links. Google now focuses on weeding out poor quality websites by penalizing websites that use these “spammy” or “black-hat” tactics. You can no longer buy your way to the top of the rankings – you now have to earn it!

Search engine ranking algorithm updates are implemented regularly by Google that redefine what should and should not be done to achieve high search engine rankings. Black and white guidelines for website development and promotional tactics are published by Google to let website owners understand their guidelines for what they look for when ranking websites. Our search engine optimization practices are current with the most up-to-date webmaster standards.

The Added Costs and Work Associated with Getting to the Top

Since all of these changes occurred, the recent search engine results pages contain more high quality relevant sites and less poor quality irrelevant sites that ultimately benefits searchers. However, all of this now comes at an added cost to businesses. No longer can you build a website and let it sit and get stale. The highest ranking sites on the Internet are constantly publishing new high-quality content in the form of articles, news, blogs, images, video, etc. SEO now requires a multi-dimensional effort to stay or get to the top of the search engine rankings.

Search engine optimization consists of following certain website design and development standards to produce a search-engine friendly website. A website that has been optimized is one whose content can easily be understood and indexed by search engine ‘spiders’ (computer programs also referred to as ‘robots’ that look for and index new website content). The search engines are continually crawling the web to index new website content in their ever expanding databases. It is essential to organize and publish content on your site in a manner that respects webmaster best practices and allows for search engines and users to easily find a determine what your website is about.

Contact us today to discuss our search engine optimization services and how they can be applied to your website!