Is SEO dead?

This is such a bizarre idea, that I have to remind myself that some people actually believe it!

Clearly the idea is often used as mere clickbait. This Entrepreneur article, for instance, The Top 4 Reasons SEO Is Dead, uses the concept as a way to get people to read the article; the author’s concluding paragraph suggests that he doesn’t actually believe SEO is dead at all.

On the other hand, this excellent post at SearchEngineLand shows that indeed people have been describing the demise of SEO for a long time; when someone says “I’m beginning to believe that search engines are a dead-end technology and fretting over where your site comes up is a big waste of time” … sure, they really do believe SEO is dead. (And that was back in 1997!)

There are two reasons that SEO is not dead: 
1: There are tens of billions of searches through major search engines every month
2: You can do things to your site to make the site rank higher in the search results

It’s just basic marketing commonsense. You go where your prospects are, and many of your prospects are using the major search engines.

Here’s the latest comScore stats for searches through major search engines: 18 billion searches in October of 2015. And that number only includes searches within the United States, from desktop computers!

In fact, it’s been reported that worldwide, Google alone handles 100 billion searches every month. That’s 14 searches a month for every man, woman, and child on the planet. Add in other search engines, in particular Bing and China’s Baidu, and allow for the fact that the Google figure is several years out of date, and the number of searches worldwide climbs closer to 200 billion a month.

Okay, so if people are using the search engines, the question then becomes, Is there anything you can do to influence the position of your site in the search results?

And the answer to that question is a resounding Yes!

In fact in many cases it’s incredibly easy to rank well in the search engines. Okay, if you’re an attorney involved in mesothelioma litigation, a realtor in San Francisco, or a mortgage broker in Dallas … you may have to work hard to make SEO pay off.

On the other hand, though, if you are a bookkeeper in a small town, an in-vitro fertilization clinic in any town, large or small, an e-commerce store selling some kind of specialized equipment … you may find it ridiculously easy to rank well and bring in real business, by optimizing your Web site.

The world’s very different today from 1998, when Google launched. There are so many more ways to reach people online. But that doesn’t mean search engines aren’t important, they still are.

SEO isn’t dead, nor dying, because people are still using the major search engines, an average of once a day per person worldwide (far more frequently when you remove babies and Papua New Guinean tribesmen from the equation and focus on adults in the “industrialized” world)…and because you can influence how search engines regard your site’s usefulness to searchers.

How do I do SEO?

To Do SEO Properly You Have To Understand Google’s Terms Of Service And Webmaster Guidelines.

For SEO in regard to google they are the essential first step.

Otherwise you are risking all manner of penalties, and a potential outright ban of your website on Google.

Google webmaster guidelines

Google Terms of Service

Having gained an understand of these things it is then learning how to stay within Google’s ToS and associated guidelines. While also making your information understandably the most valuable.

On-Page SEO And Content - The Foundation Of Success For Your Website

Pure and simple.

Your content is the biggest point of gain you can have for your SEO.

The current three major ranking factors in Google are:

1. Backlinks
2. Content
3. Rank Brain

Backlinks have always been important, but Google has diminished their value.

Content is very much becoming king!

But to get the best of it you have to be creating very high quality content. You need to produce content, be it blog posts or articles, which totally outclass your competitors.

Key things within your content, which most people are aware of are:

1. Titles - Ensure you have your keywords in advantageous positions here. Ideally the first word should be the keyword that you are wishing to rank for. This sends a very strong signal to Google in regard to what you are writing about. As such it has to be at the forefront of your mind when creating the blog post or article.
2. Headings - These are far more important than most people realise. Use them to break up your content into smaller sections. Each of which effectively has its own title. The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly each sub-heading sends a signal to Google about your content, and what it is about. SEO after all is about serving data to search engines in a way they can easily understand and also prioritise. Secondly, by doing this you enhance the user experience. This in itself sends a yet stronger signal to Google that your content is of value. Hence brings you yet another boost in your rankings, and more traffic. So Headings are of strong SEO value.
3. Word Count - The average for Page 1 content is now well over 1,500 words. As a SEO copywriter I have seen this climb a lot. The figure of 1,500 words originated from a study done in 2014, four years ago. Recently I have seen word counts climb over 5,000 words for a lot of search terms. Word count is an indication of authority on a subject. It also enables writers to work in more keywords naturally, plus a greater variety of LSI keywords too. So there is strong SEO value in long form content. Add to this the value it has in terms of user experience, when it is high quality content. And you have a way for generating some amazing signals to Google that your page is the one that should be ranked top. Invest in quality content, it will seriously pay you back. Especially if you make that content link bait! Gaining natural quality links can send even stronger signals that you have got a page worthy of prime position.
4. HTTPS - As of July 2018 this is essential. It may seem like a small thing. Yet without it you are unlikely to get any visitors from Google. Period. From July 2018 Google is serving a warning to searchers that http only sites are unsafe. Which means the majority of searchers will just click back and find another source for what they want. Basically, it is a case of get SSL properly installed, take your whole site to https, or lose all your traffic.
5. Mobile First - Also from summer 2018 is the total removal of the desktop index. Meaning that all users of Google, regardless of device, will be served the mobile index. So if your site is not mobile capable, it will likely be disappearing from SERPs. This is a relatively easy fix for most people. If you are on Wordpress you are almost set, a quick switch to a newer HTML5 theme will basically see you right. If you are hard coding the site from scratch in html, then you also need to switch to HTML5. Then code in versions for different screen sizes and ensure that they are annotated properly so that Google knows you have a mobile friendly site.
6. Inner Linking - Make sure your site is easy to navigate. Inner linking also sends a wide range of other signals to Google which are beneficial to you. Not least is how the inter linking of pages demonstrates which content is most valuable on your site. The inner linking also serves to funnel visitors around your site to the pages you wish them to go to. Straight off this sends signals about engagement, more time on site and more pages per session are strong indications of your site’s value. Plus as users spend more time on your site they get ever closer to wishing to buy from you. Which is your real goal for doing SEO in the first place. Your goal is never really to rank well, it is to get traffic which converts on your offers. As an additional note here, set Google Analytics up right and Google will see people buying from you, which sends even stronger signals about the value of your content!
7. Images And Video - Google values rich content very highly. Having relevant images and video can really help your SEO efforts. But there is a lot more to it than just adding your images straight to the page. Google is unable to understand what they actually are. As such it looks for relevance via titles, tags and a variety of other factors. So the best thing you can do is ensure that you have filled out the meta data for your images effectively. When you do so, you will find a beneficial effect on your rankings.
8. Site Speed - The effect of site speed on rankings is very noticeable. Whilst not a direct ranking metric itself, it does brush on a large number of ranking factors. Most of which revolve around the focal point for Google which is user experience. You absolutely have to be building and optimizing your site for your users. When the user experience metrics are all firing properly it is relatively easy for a page, or site, without links to outrank larger authority sites with poorer user experience metrics. When your site loads quickly, especially on mobile devices (which now account for around 66% of most searches and users) you have a much better user experience on site. Thus you will rank better than others.
9. Avoid Paid Links Like The Plague! - Most SEO consultants and agencies work on building links. You have to be exceptionally careful when doing this. Largely because you are so much at risk of infringing Google’s ToS. If you are paying for links then you are most definitely infringing Google’s ToS and you are looking at a site ban when, not if, when, your efforts are discovered. And they will be discovered. This is what all of the various algorithmic updates are about really. Weeding out people who are manipulating rankings and violating the ToS. When sites are discovered to have paid for links they disappear from search, meaning all the money spent on links has been wasted. Build for the long term. Invest in high quality content that serves as link bait for natural links. While also providing a high quality user experience. With all of the on-page SEO properly loaded in. And let that get the links you need naturally!

These nine factors should have you set.

Focus on high quality content and completely avoid all paid links.

Doing so will have you building long term success which just gets stronger and stronger. The more great content you add, the more traffic you will attract.

If you are not a writer then get a really good writer to write for you. Avoid sites where you have writers clustered together, they are generally of lower quality. Find a dedicated writing service that knows what they are doing and has incredible skill. 

This may not be the fast way. However link campaigns are very dangerous now, and getting enough links to rank can take months or years, both to accumulate and to see the effects due to changes in the Google algorithm.

Properly done on-page SEO can bring results in a far shorter time, far far shorter!