Big Google SEO Changes that You Need To Know About
Hint: it's not looking good for the other guys.SEO companies are one of my pet peeves. If you and I have ever had an SEO conversation, you’ve probably heard me say that most SEO providers are ripping off their customers. They often do the bare minimum amount of work needed each month while charging huge monthly fees. They get away with it because most clients lack the necessary SEO knowledge to check their work. Another huge problem (and the reason for this blog post) is that SEO efforts are typically designed around content for search engine robots, not humans. This can deliver increased view counts in the analytics reports but not necessarily an increase in quality viewers. Like most business owners, I prefer a new quality lead over 100 new clicks in an analytics report. You probably do too.
Robot-focused SEO is easy to identify because it’s challenging to read, loaded with bloated paragraphs and repeating keywords. For example, on the Hero Agency home page you’ll find this search optimized heading: “HERO is a website management and digital marketing agency in Nashville, TN. Our mission is to build engaged audiences for our clients”. A typical big box SEO agency would maybe change that to say: “Hero Agency is a Nashville, TN-based website design, website development, and website management solutions provider & digital marketing agency serving the Middle Tennessee region and beyond. We also focus on SEO and email marketing to help businesses grow their reach. Our target marketing mission is to build engaged website audiences for our Nashville clients and increase their website ROI”. Yuck! Which heading best communicates who we are to you without wasting your time?
Website SEO done right?
We’ve built high-quality web presences since before Google even existed and we’ve always resisted the corporate SEO business model. We design and develop websites for human use and build SEO campaigns around that. Hero has never performed clunky SEO keyword loading. It’s objectively bad and we simply won’t do it. And here’s the BIG NEWS, Google finally agrees with us!
The GOOG releases thousands of search algorithm updates for its ranking system each year. While most deliver incremental improvements, the latest should significantly affect the user experience. In a recent announcement about this update, Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search education liaison, explained that queries for entertainment, technology, e-commerce, and how-to content should benefit the most. “This update aggregates a variety of signals about [the site’s content] to determine the ranking. If the content as helpful, and designed to help or inform people rather than rank well on search engines, it should benefit. Specific tactics creators can deploy with their content include clearly demonstrating first-hand experience or depth of knowledge with a topic, and giving your site (and content) a primary purpose or focus.” (mildly edits for brevity)
Google is finally disincentivizing the quantity over quality approach and the shortcuts designed to game the system. They’re putting users first, striving for relevant results for their user’s queries. That means the business model that most SEO companies use is ending. They’ll have to start doing what Hero has always done to stay in business – quality over quantity.
At Hero, we do everything web: design, development, hosting, management, security, content, SEO, social media, and email marketing campaigns. Need help making your website work for your business? Ready to fire that useless big box website provider you’re stuck with? Contact us today!
