Google – Love it or just tolerate their whims…
Google - Content Creation and the Gorilla
Either way, you’re going to have to play with the gorilla in the room. If you want traffic, for the most part, you’re going to need to speak Google – fluently and in the dialect that they want at any given time. Provided you give Google some decent content to suck up, generally, you’ll probably do okay. But changes have been rolling out…
Content is still king
While any major change by Google always has me on edge, my sites for the most part have remained unaffected. As a matter of fact, some of them have increased in ranking as we believe onpage SEO is the basis for any good site and search engine ranking. Taking a crap site and backlinking the bejeebers out of it is not a substitute for quality content – at least not for the long-term results that most companies want. And when those questionable backlinks get discarded by Google, what are you left with? Bad content. LOL.
Is Google trying to bring Content Creation to the masses?
It honestly seems that Google is trying to dumb down web page creation and content creation. While we have focused on major SEO things like keyword density in the past, putting terms here and there, making sure things are repeated in title tags and header tags; current claims are that Google wants content written for humans and not designed to focus on the search engines.
Keyword repetition, keyword placement, etc versus the average Joe just writing his stream of consciousness stuff out there with no logical flow or plan – I suspect that there IS a happy medium out there. We see a lot of web pages that don’t really HAVE any keywords mentioned so that is still required, but I have a feeling about the time I pop out a 4% keyword density these days, I’m going to get dinged for aggressive SEO tactics. Then again, maybe not…
Now I have SEEN Over-optimization
After my article on “Professional SEO Company” the other day, I have now seen over-optimization in all it’s glory. And I think those sites NEED hammering by the gorilla. I can now authoritatively say that I HAVE seen over-optimization. There no longer is ANY question in my mind what over-optimization is. I was afraid that maybe we had crossed the line on some of our sites, but after seeing those keyword-stuffed pages, tags and more… No, no we haven’t toed that line.
Google claims that their search engines are smart enough to figure out what a page is about without repetitive use of keywords, but I don’t think that we need to stop thinking about keyword densities. There should still be keyword research, keyword placement concerns, all while keeping an eye on standard SEO wisdom and best practices.
After seeing the “Professional SEO Company” work the other day, I have NOW decided that we in REAL SEO are not about to disappear. There is plenty of need for good content, professional SEO work and more. Some need to be dinged for over the top SEO practices, but I think creating a good performing website is still beyond the scope of an average user that is not experienced in web design AND SEO except in all but the weakest of competition areas. If you’re doing a site about “zebra farming in Clayton NC” – you probably WILL rise to the top – for all else, you’ll probably want a professional!
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