To say that search engine optimization has gone through changes is an understatement.
What was once a shady practice in promoting your online business is now a full-fledged marketing framework that delivers value to your audience.
Below is an infographic from QuickSprout detailing the evolution of SEO over the years.
Here are three takeaways from the information above:
Content marketing
Content will be useless if no one is viewing it. But when used alongside SEO and other marketing channels, it becomes king.
The fact that companies have integrated content marketing into their strategy speaks volume on the power of content.
Instead of sharing ideas and information, content can now increase your sales, build your brand, and engage with your audience, among other benefits.
If you haven’t begun with doing content marketing yet, here’s a great place to start.
Spend more
Barrie Smith’s case study about cheap link building is a cautionary tale that proves one thing: less will always be less.
As the saying goes, if it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t.
SEO has evolved to become more than just a game of numbers. In today’s SEO, quality counts.
This is why you need to allot a portion of your budget to purchase services that provide you quality SEO opportunities.
SearchMetrics, named Best SEO Software of 2014 by US Search Awards, helps you track and manage your content, mobile, social, and search optimization performance. This will provide you insights on how to improve your SEO efforts to reach the right prospects.
Also, it’s important to analyze on-page SEO factors of your websites.
By optimizing your sites and blogs from the beginning, it’ll be much easier for you to rank higher on search results.
For starters, you can run try Netpeak Spider to perform a technical SEO audit.
The tool will crawl your site and search for issues and problems.
And by correcting these errors, you can help enhance your site’s SEO performance sooner than later.
If you’re looking for tools that perform a specific task within your SEO strategy, refer to this list.
Stop chasing the tail
The mistake most people make with SEO is gamification.
Instead of focusing on developing a comprehensive strategy, most go for trendy ways to build backlinks.
These trends work in the meantime. But as with all trends, they go out of vogue.
Keyword stuffing? Flagged.
Article marketing? Dead.
Guest posting? No thanks.
Those who used these tactics found themselves removed from SERPs for their target keywords. They are left scrambling for new tactics to use and move up the rankings again.
This unsustainable way of SEO is a waste of your time and effort.
Instead of using these flimsy techniques, why don’t you go for something of substance?
Try out the Skyscraper Technique to find and use great content and make an even greater one. Find backlinks of the great content you used to produce a greater content. Reach out to site owners and tell them to link to your content instead.
Another smart way to build backlinks is the broken link building. You reach out to site owners with resource pages related to your topic. You tell them the links on the page that don’t work anymore and ask them to include your website on the list.
These strategies also line up with your content marketing and relationship building, which play important roles in SEO.
Doing these tactics will take you time and effort to accomplish. But unlike the techniques that have been flagged by search engines, the strategies above give value to your target audience and guarantee you a more sustainable SEO campaign.
Final thoughts: SEO is constantly evolving. Just like the constant changes in life, you need to change your approach and adapt along with the developments in this field to stay competitive in your market.
More on search engine optimization:
The Future of SEO – How Every Blogger Needs to be Positioned to be Successful
The Best SEO Tools For Keyword Research
Author: Christopher Jan Benitez
Freelance writer for hire by day. Heavy sleeper at night. Dreams of non-existent brass rings. Writer by trade. Pro wrestling fan by choice (It’s still real to me, damnit!). Family man all the time.
Infographics used here is great for easy understanding. I thing now-a-days having a great informative and engaging content is 40% of SEO. Backlinks still plays a major role. anyway, thanks for the great share.
That’s an awesome infographic. Easy to read and understand. This will be very handy in my SEO work. Thanks!