This question was causing quite a bit of contention in one of the SEO focused LinkedIn groups I belong to: What is the most important aspect of an SEO campaign?
Some people thought it was all about the url.
Some people thought it was all about the META TITLE.
And one person was even brave enough to suggest the META KEYWORDS tag had made a come-back.
But what do I think?
Well, the complicated answer is there is no ‘magic pill’. Google use a couple of hundred ranking signals in their algorithm; all of which contribute to the ‘relevance’ of a web page to a search query.
The simple answer is the most important aspect of an SEO campaign is, or rather, are, the websites that link to you.
Let’s take a look at an example:
I’m going to use the [5 star las vegas hotel] search. Now, the first hotel that I see is the Bellagio.
After a quick scan of their website, they don’t seem to be optimising their content for this search term but they still rank.
Why? Because they’ve attracted about 20,000 incoming links and Google will take a look at its link graph and will see a whole bunch of sites linking to Bellagio, from content about 5 star las vegas hotels.
And then it will take a look at the page content in its index and make a pretty reasonable assumption that the content is relevant to my search.
And if there’s one thing to concentrate your SEO efforts on is attracting links from high quality, relevant websites. Now this raises a challenge in itself: do you have any content worth linking to?
In 2010, we achieved full Google accreditation and had more search-related ‘can you help us?’ conversations than you can shake a USB stick at.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is fundamental to the planning, building and growing of a website, simply because Google (and its competitors) wants to feature unique, useful and jaw-droppingly interesting websites in its search results.
With every development Google rolls out, the SEO landscape expands and this will continue in 2011. Instant Search and Search Suggestions now make the longtail just as important as that elusive vanity phrase. Site Previews will enable users to pick sites based on look and layout. There’s more to search than just picking the right keywords.
However, the point of greatest interest will be where search and social media meet. The websites that succeed in search will be the ones that make a positive contribution to the social graph of their online communities.
And what about analytics? Now you can track almost everything, the challenge is to ensure business decisions and strategies are based on data that really matters. So 2011’s key question won’t be “How are we monitoring our visitors’ behaviour?” It’s going to be “What are we going to do with this insight?”
Want to hear our ideas?
Darren and Lisa are our latest experts to express their point of view – and it just so happens they’re on opposing sides of the aisle. Darren believes that ideas are everything, Lisa believes it’s all in the data.
Watch Darren and Lisa go head to head as they discuss the relative merits of creativity and science. Then cast your vote in our online poll and join the debate.
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