The SEO pursuit is similar to other forms of marketing in some ways but very different in others. Its unique because it operates in a closed system where the rules are governed by the search engines. These rules are secret, known only to those higher ups at the search engines, and can be changed at any time – Google is reported to make over 500 changes to its algorithm every year. This makes SEO a constantly moving target and means that SEO providers need to keep on top of industry news to make sure they don’t lose touch.
Here are methods that help us to work out how the search engines might work;
- Look at the search engine guidelines. Both Google and Bing have detailed webmaster guidelines that give great information (from their perspective) about how you should approach SEO.
- Look at industry studies and reports. The most well known is SEOmoz’s semi-annual Search Engine Rankings Factors survey and correlation study.
- Do internal studies and testing to work out what works and what doesn’t.
- Read the how to’s, articles and presentations of other SEO professionals to see what is working for them. The SEO industry has a very active blogging community so there’s always heaps of articles coming out that you can learn from. You can also get a good overview of strategies and news by subscribing to an SEO news site such as Search Engine Land.
- Hang off every word of the search engine’s representatives such as Google’s Matt Cutts. You can also check out webmaster Q&A’s from Google on Youtube and follow their blogs for updated news.
An alternative to trying to figure how the search engines decide which websites should be ranked higher is to focus on creating high quality websites that provide value to users and hope that the search engines will give it due credit.
We focus on high quality techniques that improve your website and take much of the guesswork out of SEO.
Learn More About Our SEO Process.