When you hear about a change to a Google algorithm, the knee-jerk reaction is usually “how will this affect my SEO?” Every day, this reaction is becoming more backwards. SEO, as a product, has been inflated by digital marketers over the past 5 years. The reason is that it’s easy to sell a magic bullet that gets you on the top of the Google results for keywords related to your business.
SEO means Search Engine Optimization, so it’s safe to say that the service should be focused on making your site the first choice when a user searches for something relevant to your site. So an SEO expert should be able to make changes to your site, and take action around the web to take advantage of Google’s search algorithms. Google has changed their search algorithms twice a day on average in 2013. So how can you possibly expect to be consistently “optimized” for them.
As the algorithms evolve, and Google cracks down on link building scams, their focus is more and more on providing relevant content for the searcher. This means that the end goal for Google isn’t to pick the site with the most backlinks, or the site with the best metadata keywords. The searcher has a question, and Google wants to answer it with the site that best covers the topic. This is primarily what the Hummingbird update aimed to do: Give searchers relevant answers.
This is where content marketing comes in. Each topic, relevant to your business, that you can cover is essentially another Google query, you’re prepared for no matter what animal Google names their next update after. Sure, keywords will still be important, but I challenge you to write an article on “replacing spark plugs” without ever saying “spark plug.” Google’s bots have gotten smarter as well, they can better understand the message of a single sentence so you don’t need to inject a ridiculous keyword string to make sure all of your bases are covered.
The future of “SEO” will still include doing the essential steps like submitting a sitemap to webmaster tools, and setting up a GooglePlus account for authorship, but the greater focus will be on having content that is useful for searchers. Having great content that you spread across your entire web presence has a much more powerful effect than just showing up at the top of Google’s search results. Great content gets shared. When your content really helps someone, they’ll pass it along to their network, which gives your content extra credibility. Now you have motivated visitors that didn’t even need to perform a search to arrive on your page.
Want to learn more about how your dealership can benefit from having high quality content? Content Motive has a variety of products that can build your web presence.