Do you know what is the best solution to not get stressed out by all the updates Google does?
To not depend on Google.
Ok! Google (and Search Engines) are essential for the health and succes of any site. To be in Google and having your site leading the highest number of SERPs is strategic and the best way to rule in your market. But when I see that more of the 70% of the traffic of a website is from Google, I start screaming in terror.
It is like relying all our business to just one client… if that client drops out, we are doomed.
SEO is…
Let’s try to remember what SEO is. Search Engine Optimization, that’s what surely you are saying. Yes, but not only.
SEO is an imperfect definition right now… as Rand Fishkin told in this interview, because the final objective of an SEO is to obtain the most relevant organic traffic, and organic is not synonymous of SERPs. Any kind of traffic that is generated by a not paid tactic is organic. Therefore an SEO should be optimizing a site and not thinking just to search results.
That is one of the most important mantra for a web marketer. And for any SEO. Why? Because the Google of today is not the Google of yesterday and the actual Google is just a preview of the Google of tomorrow: a very different Google.
I am not just talking about the blended search… I’m talking about authority, authorship, entity and brand.
Since Vince Google proved its unconditional love for Brands. An Entity is a more generic definition of Brand. Both see in authority an essential element to be considered so. To build authority you need to go out of your site, be active, to create content that people love to share and link. And now, with the increasing importance of the social signals, authority is related to authorships… as the rel=”publisher” present in the Google+ for business badge proves.
Yes, we still see exact matching domains ranking very well, but we know that Google is working on that issue. More over, we can infer from experiments like this one, which show that partial matching anchor texts are better correlated than exact matching ones, that the same is what the Google of tomorrow will do.
What SEOs must start to understand is that Google is slowly but firmly moving from the pure LinkGraph to a mixed Trusted-Social-Link-Graph. That means that SEO now (and even more in the future) must not rely to the old classic tunes and has to finally move from just technical SEO to a wider concept of SEO, which includes content and social marketing… and this is Inbound Marketing.
What conclusion: that Inbound Marketing is not just a nice definition, is not just a rebrand of marketing online, is a necessity in order to be a better SEO. Inbound marketing not only will give your site new sources of traffic (and be less dependent of Google), but also it will make you rank better, because spreading your content outside of your site you will be acquiring authority and if you’re not a brand/entity you will start being considered a brand/entity, and if you are an authoritative brand quite obviously you are going to be liked, shared, plussed one because you are the thoughtful leader in your market.
What about Black Hat? Yes, it will exist still, but the Black Hat job will start to be so hard in order to create sites/bots more human than the human, that it will probably become easier to spend the same amount of energy and resources being really real and White Hat.
So, dear SEOs, think Inbound to gain the SEO war.
Great post and totally agree. There is too much emphasis on the technical which creates an unnecessary divide between marketers and SEOs. What’s more, on the point about Google today, a lot of SEO is about being a step ahead- concept which is difficult to convey well to clients!
Great Post..GOOGLE is what we cant predict. Sooner we got our hands on one of the algorithms, later it evolves a brand new algo.
But surely its all in favour of us.
So keep the google their work doing and stay to keep on putting your best efforts onto your sites in the most appropriate and cleaner manner.
Oh!! Straight slap on google’s face. I too believe that why we people are showcasing our business towards only one shop i.e. Google. Why don’t we fear of losing it all if the shop disappear or fall down?
“Any traffic that is generated by not paid tactic is ORGANIC” – it’s a quote you’ve developed which should be added to SEO quotes list.
A must read post. Thanks a lot.
Pretty Much agree on everything mention here.. Inbound marketing is a demand of internet industry.