AgroKrag is based upon the principle that every aspect of graphic design and marketing is connected. Since a large portion of our work is web focused, SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is no exception. With that said, I’d like to give an overview of how SEO (Search Engine Optimization – a segment of SEM) techniques are evolving.
Much of this post contains strategies from a SEM training session that I recently attended in Boston. This session was hosted by Search Engine Strategies, and presented by Jennifer Laycock, who is the owner of the blog/SEM company Search Engine Guide.
The training session was very intensive and informative and was based around the focal point that SEO has came a long way the birth of the term (1996) To the present. Search engine algorithms are being designed to think like humans do, and to replicate human judgment. More and more, SEO is based on common sense then it is on math and calculations.
META data
Keywords were very popular and used by search engines when they were less complex – in the eyes on the search engine, the more keywords, the more relevant the site had to be according to that phrase. Obviously this is no longer the case. SEO’s quickly learned how the algorithm worked and stuffed keywords everywhere. Now META data is not very important at all in terms of search results. The title tag still is very important, and the one and only place where you should make sure you have your keyword(s) (besides in the content, of course.) META keywords are obsolete (but in my eyes important to guide the developer and copywriter), META descriptions do not effect search results but they still are a good way to tell what the site is about in your own words rather then let the search engine do it by pulling copy from your site.
Links
As inbound linking became extremely important, SEO’s purchased, spammed, created link farms, etc. Search engines became aware of this and the importance of links evolved as follows:
1. Quantity
2. Text (anchor text)
3. Quality
4. Age
5. Buys
It now seems to be a combination of all of these, with the focus being on not over-doing it in a particular area. Google has stated that they will penalize you if you purchase links for improving your search engine results. They want the links to come naturally as in theory the site with the best content will gain the most inbound links. Reciprocal links have also been frowned upon in many occasions. They are great when two sites are related to each-other, but if not they do not help the user and Google is aware of that. Anchor text is also important, but should look natural and should not always just be keyword based in order to rank for long-tail keywords.
Content
As of now, content is the single most important piece to the puzzle. If you create quality content, based on keywords (no more then 2-3 per page), people will link to you naturally. There should be a “value-add” to every page and a reason why a user would choose your page versus a competitor’s.
Coming soon: Latent Semantic Indexing and tracking CTR
Apparently Google is beginning to include “Latent Semantic Indexing” in their algorithms. What this means is that the engine will scan the page for keywords and synonyms of that word, and the site can rank for those as well as a word that may be used to categorize a group of those words. For example, a site about running, jogging, biking and weight lifting may begin to rank for “exercising.” Google is also taking click-through rates into consideration. If a page has a horrible rate, it is less likely to rank as it is seen as less valuable to the user.
Again, be sure to check out Search Engine Guide. Jennifer was a big help and has enabled me to be a lot more confident in my own SEO techniques.
