Why You Need To Get Smarter About SEO
How’s your SEO IQ? Here’s a quick quiz to find out:
• Do you know what SEO stands for?
• Do you know what your website’s top five keywords are?
• Do you know what Google’s
algorithm is?
If you answered yes to all of these questions, congratulations! You’re an SEO genius. If you answered no to at least two, well, I’m sorry. You have to keep reading this column.
Here’s why you need to know the answers to those questions: Nearly all business originates online. Even if people aren’t buying your product on your website, they’re probably going to Google to do research about your product. If your company’s website doesn’t show in the search results, no one’s going to visit your store and you’re going to go out of business. It might not happen quickly, but it will happen.
So let’s take the questions one by one:
1. Do you know what SEO stands for?
It stands for search engine optimization. That’s a fancy-sounding phrase that basically means you design and maintain your website so it can be easily catalogued by search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.
2. Do you know what your website’s
top five keywords are?
Keywords are the words and phrases that people plug into search engines. If you own an Italian restaurant in Worcester, your top keywords would likely be Worcester, restaurant and Italian. It’s pretty simple to identify your keywords. You just need to think like a customer.
3. Do you know what Google’s
algorithm is?
Here’s the part where it sounds complicated, but it isn’t. Google’s algorithm is its method for identifying and ranking websites. It uses a whole host of factors to figure out whether a web page is a good source for particular information. The most important factor is the content on your site. Also very important is who links to your site.
Staying Ahead Of The Game
The tricky thing about Google’s algorithm is the fact that Google is always tweaking the rules, which can have a big impact on a business website’s search results. The biggest change to the algorithm came out in February 2011. Its goal was to reward content-rich sites with better search results while pushing spammy websites lower down in results.
Google has continued fine-tuning these changes, called Panda, and released a tweak (called Penguin) in May.
While there have been published reports of businesses that have seen their results plummet due to Penguin, the SEO experts at Boston Web Marketing say their clients haven’t been impacted.
“We really haven’t seen a huge effect,” said Matt Wilkos, director of SEO at Boston Web, which has offices in Westborough. “A lot of stories you read about involved people that made mistakes in the process of keeping their websites ahead of the game.”
Staying “ahead of the game,” as Wilkos calls it, is basically a full-time job and it’s what keeps the phones ringing at firms like Boston Web.
Two of the main issues Google’s latest update focuses on are punishing sites that do something known as “keyword stuffing.” The second punishes sites that buy links. A site is punished with worse search results, meaning they are farther down on a search results list.
Numbers Game
Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of filling a page with keywords. Such an effort used to help search results, but Google is trying to weed out the posers who abuse the use of keywords.
The trouble is that every SEO expert will tell you that using keywords is important. But how much is too much?
“It is a delicate balance,” Wilkos said. “There is no exact percentage of keywords that you should use.” Wilkos recommends that a given page should have no more than 6 to 8 percent of its text be keywords. Some say the rule of thumb is 10 percent, but Wilkos is more conservative. Certainly, if your keyword percentage reaches up toward 20 percent, “it’s a big red flag” for Google’s algorithm and you may see your search results punished.
Avoid Link-Buying Schemes
The second thing to avoid if you want to keep Google’s algorithm happy is participating in link-purchasing schemes. There are a number of sites that promise better search results if you pay them for links to your site. I’ve also received a number of shady emails with such offers over the years. The rule here is common sense: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
n
Got news for the Digital Diva? Email Christina H. Davis at cdavis@wbjournal.com.
Read more
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments