The Problem:
SEO (search engine optimization) changes so rapidly. If you are a top quality optimizer, you know that, long term, the tips and tricks are bullshit.
The Business
The Anti SEO-SEO Company.
Optimizing for search engines is simply a way to bring visitors to your website from search engines. Over the last 20 years, people have gone to great lengths to learn what they think search engines want. (I myself, have actually read pieces of google’s search patents.) Tips and tricks are then employed to “game the algorithm.” It never works (for long periods of time.) The search engines – and by “the search engines” I mean Google – adjust the algorithm to make up for the spam.
Over time, great content and good user experience are what matter.
Doableness
If great content and user experience are all that matters, why do you even need an SEO company at all?
- First, conveying to search engines that you genuinely have great content and user experience is a job in and of itself.
- Second, I’m oversimplifying.
A site should have a certain structure that is both optimal for people and optimal for search engines. These two things don’t conflict. They can and should work in perfect harmony. That’s why you need an SEO company. An “Anti SEO SEO Company”, that is.
This idea is extremely doable for someone who not only specializes in search, but always stays current in search. The “Anti SEO SEO Company” is just a branding statement for a great SEO company.
My Thoughts
I maintain a website that brings in a great quantity of cases for attorneys with whom I work. The site has excellent content and a phenomenal user experience. The proof, for me, is in the page views per visit. My page views per visit (on a very good amount of traffic for a state specific law site) is close to five. This is a very high number. (Not to take all of the credit, Google produces most of the traffic, so they obviously do a wonderful job sending the most interested people.)
Google updated their algorithm today. I should have read about it. It was announced at an industry conference. But I have been busy. The change was designed, as it always is, to eliminate spammy bullshit and increase the rankings of genuine quality. My site got smacked.
WHY? Why would my genuinely valuable site get penalized? Because I did something slightly underhanded about 18 months ago. I inserted something called “enable glossary replacement.” In essence, it was a computer program designed to link keywords to my glossary. I figured it was a way of generating a lot of intersite links very quickly. It didn’t just link the first instance of the keyword, it linked every instance. I was too lazy to fix it. Stupid decision. I’ve meant to change it before. I didn’t. I paid the price.
So all the time I spent was (hopefully only in the short-term) negated by one lazy, stupid mistake. I have spent the last two hours correcting the mistake and will probably spend the next two as well. I’m not only correcting the mistake, but trying to make the content even more valuable and the user experience even better.
Hopefully, Google will see my corrections and restore me to my former glory. My page views per visitor will certainly go down as a result of Google’s changes. This should tip Google off to the fact that their changes weren’t perfect, at least when it comes to a site like mine. (A site that does everything right, but made a stupid, correctable mistake.) Time will tell.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I agree… these days I believe the best thing a company can do is give Google what they want… make great content for the users, then market that content to people.