It is time to wind up 2014 and welcome 2015 and march ahead with the lessons learnt in the past year. The Digital World is ever evolving and especially the arena of Search Engine Optimization is the most critically acclaimed and a service which gets predicted as dead at the end of every year, especially post Panda and Penguin algorithm updates at Google.But, as usual we at WebPro Technologies have always remained positive about its need for every website hosted on the WWW . Hence, at WebPro Technologies it is that time of the year when SEO business targets are set for the coming year. We again state that SEO is again going to be one of our major services for 2015 along with Social Media services, Content Writing and Email Info Campaigns for our current client base and the prospective future clients which we are very positive and hopeful about in the coming year.
Let us understand why SEO will always be needed as long as people use search engines.
Search engines know that if they do not give quality results to the users then the users will look for other options and stop using their search engine. We have seen in the past that search engines like Altavista, Hotbot, lycos , Yahoo, etc. (The search options available in early 2000) all got extinct as they did not succeed in upgrading their algorithms with the pace with which the spammers were misusing it. Google has been comparatively successful and has tried to combat the spam and is always trying to improve the search results with time.
As the old saying “people do not change, they reveal who they are” Similarly SEO is not changing but as the algorithms are getting more sophisticated and are able to see through the spam and gimmicks used by immature and black hat SEOs, its true meaning and purpose is getting highlighted with every update in the search algorithms.
SEO is changing for people who did not understand the true meaning of SEO and used tricks to gain search presence rather than having a correct approach towards reaching there.
SEO is changing for those website owners who wanted cheap options and hence put their trust in so called link builders instead of having an SEO culture in their organization.
SEO is changing for those website owners who have burnt their fingers in the past with the launch of the Panda and Penguin updates.
W3C is the main organization which establishes the World Wide Web Standards. Google and all the search engines follow the WWW standards but the Vice Versa is not true.
Hence as the law of Transitivity states if a=b and b=c then a=c.Similarly if we follow the W3C norms for web development and since Google algorithms are also becoming sophisticated in verifying these norms on websites then we in the long run we take care of on-page SEO automatically.
Ideal SEO campaigns have always focused on the following aspects:
On Page Factors:
· Title Tags
· Description Tags
· Suggestions for landing pages to make them more effective
· Work on the site architecture and navigation
· Image optimization
· Making the maximum benefit from videos on the site
· Header Tags
· Working on the content to ensure that it falls in the category of quality content
Off Page Factors and Quality Web Presence:
· Integrating Social Media
· Social Media sites focused are Twitter, Google+ profile and pages , Facebook Business Page and Linkedin Profile
· Guiding the in house staff on how to use social media effectively to establish trust and authority
· Guidance on how to develop a blog and maintain it
· Improve on the quality of existing inbound links to the site by working on the details about the domain authority, Anchor Text and the relevant linked page from the external site.
· Work on cleaning the link profile of non topical links.
· Help in creating and monitoring a social media and content development strategy.
Local Search:
· Adding the details to Google Places and Google Maps
· Integrate the Google Places account with the Google+ Business Page
· Suggesting methods by which you can encourage customers to write reviews
· Optimize for Local intent keywords for organic search
Other Technical Factors:
· Set the canonical issues
· Robots.txt
· XML Sitemaps
· Add Structured Data in the form of Microformats and Microdata wherever applicable on the site
· Customized 404 (Page Not Found) Page
· Work on Improving the Site Speed
· Add Authorship Markup to the blog
· Add Twitter Cards and FaceBook open Graph meta tags to the blog
· Guide the web developer to implement microformats or schemas for products and reviews.
All the factors mentioned above work together and in unison to influence the rankings. On-page optimization lays the foundation stone for the edifice , the off-page optimization influence the popularity and affect the stability and improvement of the rankings achieved and the technical factors influence the search engines to crawl and index the website efficiently.
All this cannot be achieved in a day. SEO is an ongoing process and the website needs to be tweaked and tuned as per the changing algorithms of the search engines in order to adapt the site to the changing scenarios so that it can withstand the algoquakes and maintain the visibility.
I think these aspects (especially the on-page ) have been applicable since the time the search engines have started. Hence, the SEO in 2015 is not new but the algorithms are more sophisticated to see thru the spam in the way these factors have been implemented to trick search engines by spammers. Hence in a way we can say that the algorithms are new.
Genuine SEOs are implementing these aspects as per W3C since early 2000. Yes the off page optimization does vary and widen as per the user behaviour . In 2000 social media was not a rage online hence it was not a part of the SEO campaigns. The off-page and Technical factors do get tweaked with time but the basic approach remains the same. The off-page factors get affected by major user behaviour changes and the technical factors get affected as per the sophistication in the algorithms and how this data will be fetched by search engine bots from the servers.
Keeping this the basic approach to SEO in 2015 still remains the same but the algorithms are more sophisticated and we need to be more systematic in the execution of the above mentioned factors. We also need to be more patient for the results to accrue as though the indexing is faster by the search engines , the competition is also increasing at an alarming rate with billions of websites being launched on a regular basis.
Hence in 2015 it is very necessary to have an integrated digital presence by focusing on :
· SEO
· Social Media
· Content
· Email Campaigns
Only when all the above mentioned media are implemented together a certain online reputation can be created.
When your potential customer sees your website ranking for the searches he made on the search engine and then also checks the social media for the buzz and finds the presence of your business and reads what his contacts had to say and also get an email from you in his inbox giving more information it is surely going to register in his mind and will surely consider when he takes a decision related to the products and services you have to offer.
The consistency in our thought process and our approach towards SEO is proved by the blog posts we have written in the past. These posts are testimony to the fact that we still believe in what we do. Our basic approach to SEO still remains the same but it has become more systematic and every passing year since 2000 has just made us more confident giving a new lease of life to our services, despite the xn posts on the blogosphere about SEO being dead.
Some of our past year end posts which prove the consistency in our approach towards SEO Services offered by us are as follows:
Dec. 2010 : SEO And Online Presence In 2011
Dec. 2011: Saying Bye to SEO 2011 and A Very Big Hi to SEO 2012
Dec. 2012: Points To Ponder On For SEO 2013
Nov. 2012: The Evolving Face Of SEO - 14 SEO Facts For 2013
Dec. 2013: SEO 2014 The Year Of Positive SEO And The Survival Of The Fittest
