November 13, 2011 in Articles, Website Traffic Strategies by Conversion Leadership

3 Steps To Future Proof Your Search Strategy

It seems that every time Google makes a change, website owners begin a nervous search of the blogosphere, desperate for any sort of insight that will help them get one step ahead of the latest “movements” in the algorithm. While Google’s mathematical page ranking system has been singing since the very beginning, recent changes have received a significant amount of attention.

Black-hat and Grey-hat SEO techniques lead to a constant “scrambling” for every change Google initiates and this is counterintuitive and counterproductive. By applying simple best practices, like a good content strategy focusing on delivering relevant and unique information to the world are still the best strategies to use in search marketing.

So what’s really different in this latest update?

First, it’s not about freshness as much as it is the appearance of freshness. One of the core goals of search results has always been to provide timely information but not even the big “G” could have predicted the insanely high effort that would be required to keep it’s own results “fresh.”

The real-time web is generating truly massive amounts of data that must be distilled into micro segments and spoon fed to individuals when and how they want it.

Google can’t simply tell you how to make your site better than your competitor’s site. If they did, everyone would be number one for everything. (Which actually makes you number one for nothing.)

No search site or information distiller has figured out how to deal with the volume and flow of information coming from circles, micro blogs and status updates. We may be able to thank Social Media enthusiasts for the burning desire to share everything all the time, but the trend has spread to normal hard working folk as well. Our culture and information consumption is on demand and that goes for search results as well.

If you are searching for insight into what to do with the latest algorithm shift, a few things will go a long way to making sure your efforts are are not in vain.

Create Solid, Relevant & Fresh Content

First, continue on your current path of creating solid, relevant and fresh content. Don’t try to change everything because you can be sure of one thing. There are plenty more updates coming.

Configure Your Analytics Correctly

Second, make sure your analytics are configured correctly. You need to be able to make decisions based on accurate data. The bulk of panic stricken website owners and marketers don’t even count visitors correctly.

Don’t Let Your Content Get Stale

Third, staying the course on a good content strategy doesn’t mean you should let it get stale. Don’t count on your main traffic generating pages to stay that way forever. “Freshness” lends itself to giving credence to the latest and greatest content. Long term success will be an ongoing strategy to provide “Fresh” content that is meaningful and relevant.

In the end, Google’s algorithm changes seem to be just like the way we’ve come to describe the weather here in Melbourne. If you don’t like it, wait an hour.

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