Is All SEO Trying To ‘Get Something The Content Doesn’t Justify’?

I ran across this lively “SEO” discussion on Reddit and I can’t help but agree with what AnonJian had to say on the topic:

“Past getting listed, most SEO is bad SEO. White hat. Black hat.Because when you strip off the rationalizations, all SEO is trying to get something the content doesn’t justify..”

In other words, we have to realize that Google is in the business of providing quality, relevant search results for the user. If your SEO does not help Google to accomplish this goal, you’re working against Google and their business goals, which means you’re working a short-term strategy.

At the same time, if you focus on the content first, then make sure you’re hitting on at least one targeted keyword in your title as sort of an after thought, I don’t think you’re doing any harm and can only stand to benefit from increased search traffic. What do you think? Is all SEO bad?

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Google’s Interactive Scrolling Graphic Shows You ‘How Search Works’

Ever wondered how Google’s algorithm worked? Who am I kidding, of course you have. Fortunately for those of us who prefer to be taught with visuals, Google has made an interactive scrolling graphic explaining “How Search Works“!

Via Google Search Blog:

“Here you can follow the entire life of a search query, from the web, to crawling and indexing, to algorithmic ranking and serving, to fighting webspam. The site complements existing resources, including this blog, the help center, user forums, Webmaster Tools, and in-depth research papers…” [Continue Reading]

Is Content Marketing The ‘New SEO’?

Optimizing for the search engines no longer means optimizing for their algorithm, it means optimizing for those using the search engines. Naturally, you can do this by publishing content that your market would genuinely find interesting!

You have to remember that Google is in the business of providing quality, relevant search results to real people! If you help them do their job by producing top-notch content, they’re going to send plenty of traffic your way.

Patrick Murphy hits the nail on the head in this article:

“The main reason creating content just for Google is missing the point is because that’s not what Google wants you to do. Google doesn’t want you to spend time optimizing your website just for them. They want you to optimize it for users. Each Google algorithm update this year has been pushing websites towards ‘quality’ content.

Which means that SEO and content marketing are actually becoming the same thing. Quality content can drive sales and increase search ranking. Which means you should always try to create quality content first, the rest follows naturally…” [Continue Reading]

Have you updated your SEO strategy or are you still stuck in the past? Leave a comment and let us know!

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Google SERP Now Includes “+1″

Just as I’ve predicted for a few years now, the search engines are going social. For those of us who have a Google+ account you’ve probably noticed the little “+1″ button next to each listing in the search results. Which naturally makes us wonder how much this will effect the rank for listings that get a lot of “+1″ ticks.

It’s time for everybody to stop writing content that appeals to the search engines first, and start writing for people! Check out my FREE video showing you how I got 2,800+ visitors in 1 day by writing content that appeals to people first!

SearchEngineWatch.com reports:

“The SEO Effect Google +1 Experiment whitepaper, concludes that the Google +1 button saw a 20% increase in rankings which led to a corresponding lift in Clickthrough rate (CTR). Whilst in my opinion, right now, the test on rankings is too fuzzy in it’s implementation and was not competitive enough a target phrase to say anything truly groundbreaking about the impact on rankings, the real merits of the study are in the impact of trust factors on CTR. The SEO Effects findings broadly match up with Verisign’s findings that their “secured by Verisign seal” caused a lift of 18% on CTR. It seems likely that this is the message Google will most likely push about +1 swell. Google have never liked talking about how to improve rankings per se, so will instead push the concept that +1 will improve clickthrough rates in organic listings, which is merit enough for webmasters to adopt it.

With that in mind, it seems fairly safe to hypothesize that integrations with Google Webmaster Tools will show how +1 increased CTR on URLs in organic searches, whilst AdWords will show CTR increases where ads are displayed to users with a +1. This latter integration will naturally provide incentive to advertisers and webmasters as higher CTR means lower cost-per-click (CPC).

Therefore, I guess a Google Analytics integration will work on accounts that have integrated Google AdWords data, but may also show a new event similar to webmaster tools. It would be cool to see if +1 data in Google Analytics can be mapped against visitor loyalty and recency statistics. It would also be nice to see if incoming search traffic can be mapped to users who only saw it as a +1 listing.

“Regardless of what we might see in terms of tools integrations, the key takeaway from the SEO effect analysis, for me, is that it really is logical to expect a rankings increase from +1′d results.

“Even though Google has never officially said that it tracks CTR in organic search listings, experienced SEOs know that does seem to be a correlation. Equally in a fairly roundabout way Google has recently acknowledged that user data is playing more of a role in organizing results, something many have suspected is going on for years.

“Either way, if a +1 increases clicks, it naturally follows that sites will see a boost in search position (even if they don’t show up as +1′d to non-logged in users) aswell as the automatic boost from appearing in social circle results.

“I would say that it’s a happy coincidence for Google that those SEOs who really want to estimate the impact of +1 on their organic rankings are best off jumping into an AdWords campaign to calculate the influence of +1 on CTR and most easily gauge the reach of the social circle of their target audience. This is particularly great news for PPC agencies who have been looking to bolster their SEO pitch to clients and offer a more integrated service…”

Google Ranking Factors Ranked On Importance

SEOmoz has released a new version of the Search Ranking Factors survey. My eyes start to glaze over when going over this material, I can’t lie.

Look, time is precious. Would you rather spend your time analyzing SEO to death like they do in this report or would you rather just focus on publishing great content like I outline in my strategy here and spend your time on areas of your business that you have more control over? I’m not saying you shouldn’t make your meta tags, and url’s search engine friendly, but I don’t understand this mentality that says you need to analyze this stuff to death.

Am I alone here on this? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

Click Here To Check Out The Ranking Factors Survey For 2011