Build Your Site For Tomorrow’s Algorithm Change
When it comes to search engine algorithms, the one thing you can count on is change. Google says there were hundreds of tweaks last year, Bing is always refining its indexing, and scores of other “Google Killers” are trying to worm their way into the market with a better search experience. In the process of all these changes, there are sites that keep their positions, ones that suddenly move up, and others that drop off the map. People who employ search engine optimization tactics usually see their sites hold positions or improve slightly during these updates. Despite this, the majority of SEO work involves playing “catch up” with the latest indexing changes, even though they could have been anticipated with a little foresight.
Building a “Future-Proof” SEO strategy shouldn’t be too hard if you understand what search engines have in mind. Essentially the engines are trying to match people up with the best possible search result for the query, so you should build your site accordingly. You should strive to have the most authoritative pages for your keyword searches, and offer tools and resources that people can’t find on most other sites in your field. You should also stay on the “continuous improvement” path with your site design and link building since this is congruent with current SEO practices while it builds a better site for the client. A search engine gets and keeps its authority among users by giving the most accurate results, so you should not only strive for accuracy but stickiness. If Google or Bing can see that the top link for the query didn’t result in a lot of clicks back to the engine, then it is more apparent that the user found the right information. In turn, the user is going to visit the same engine in the future.
Understanding previous updates and filters can also help you anticipate what is going to happen down the road. For instance, Google recently added page speed into its list of ranking factors. Many other changes are relative to semantics, or the relationship between words on a page. Site owners with original, well written content would be the beneficiaries of better semantic indexing in the future, while people who use machine generated (or “spun”) content may find their pages in worse positions. For example, the Google Mayday update had a large impact (mainly reported as negative) on many long-tail phrases, and this was relevant to content and the trust (via linking and other signals) on pages containing that content. Anyone who is working in “Gray Hat” territory should consider the potential for future updates which are certain to be better at detecting tricks that work right now.
The influence of social media on SEO is also something that should not be discounted. Tweets, Facebook references, and other traffic relevant to a site can go a long way toward establishing an understanding of sites that are popular among users. They can also help search engines sort out which sites are “static” and which ones are playing an active role in the online community. While there isn’t too much direct social media influence on optimization right now, it does make sense to integrate your profiles with your website in order to help associate your company’s presence with a single destination.
If you’re an ecommerce site selling products, it also pays to stay ahead of the next search engine update. Search spiders and robots are always getting better at reading pages they previously could not discover. If you have a large product catalog, this means that your rivals who previously had a less SEO-friendly site are now getting crawled and indexed. Your position in the search market can get diluted by improvements in the search engine algorithms unless you plan ahead. For starters, you should make your product descriptions as unique as possible, instead of just importing in content from the manufacturer, which will appear on hundreds of other sites. Second, you should make sure your shopping cart structure has a better hierarchy, logical breadcrumbs, and good internal linking. Naturally you should have better product page titles as well. If you play your cards right, you can improve rankings across the board for your products even when the marketplace suddenly becomes more crowded.
While it isn’t possible to predict every search engine algorithm change, it pays to have a vision for search engine changes. If you expect search engines to get better at finding content, and assigning a relative value to what they find, then you can build that vision into your website strategy. In short, it pays to be the best. Not only are people more likely to link to the best website, they are also more likely to visit that site again. If you can present good information to the new searcher, and bring that person back via bookmarks and direct traffic, your benefit is obvious, while a search engine may use such information (gathered through toolbars and server logs) to understand which sites people “like” more than others. If you can readily show why someone would want to visit your site more than once, then you probably have less to fear from an SEO change than a site that does not provide the same value to visitors. As long as you can “endorse” the ranking choice made by the search engine, then you will not only be able to succeed in SEO, but you will also have a site everyone wants to see.
