Gone are the days when search engine optimization (SEO) involved the tricky practices of spamming links, stuffing of keywords, and tweaking back-end codes until a site ranks well for the desired keywords. Google, with its unending efforts to outsmart these shady practices, has strengthened its search engine algorithm. Here are the new rules for SEO that you need to master to make your way to the top of the search engine ranks.
Content is King
Along with the soft death of keyword is the rise of content as king. Since Google’s Panda update in 2011, content marketing has become an essential part of a successful SEO strategy. Rather than writing spammy content stuffed with keywords, you should curate contents that provide value to your target customers. Google characterizes good content as useful and informative, more valuable than others, credible, high quality, and engaging. It also warns against some older practices of SEO, such as the excessive number of ads and spammy comments and forums. Google advises providing the best possible, unique, and high-quality content to the audience.
Valuable Link-building
Aside from spammy contents Google now discourages link schemes or any deliberate attempts to influence your website’s ranking through links. At the onset of 2010, Google did its best to eliminate black-hat SEO and spammy link-building. When it implemented its Penguin update, it successfully outsmarted link schemes. Today, you don’t have to deal with paid linkers to rank higher. You need to practice valuable link-building through guest posts and natural link attraction to do better in page ranking.
Power of Local
With Google’s Pigeon update in 2014, local SEO emerged as a powerful tool that changed the game. Through this update, Google’s algorithm favored well-optimized websites a major competitive edge in local search. Google even boosted the visibility of local high-authority directory websites in search results ranking. In this way, Google’s new algorithm has improved distance and location-ranking parameters, making it easier for the audience to get the most relevant and useful result for them. Hence, to stay in the game, you need to ensure that your business or website appears in Google’s listings such as Google Maps and Google Business Directory.
In summary, the new rules of SE0 have become more transparent and easier to follow compared to how it was before. Online marketers can now have more thorough SEO strategies such as creating unique and high-quality contents, establishing a valuable and natural back-linking, and registering in Google listings to rank better in terms of location-based search.