In search, having the right website is more important than (almost) ever

Back in the days when Yahoo was fighting against Alta Vista, when Bing was still called Microsoft Live, and when Google was trying to get the big Y to buy them, onsite content and meta tags were search. It was a day of keyword stuff, of hidden text, and of content scraping that helped porn sites rank for the term “toys” while male enhancement drugs could be found on searches for “big fun”. Google emerged as the leader in part because of their pure design, but also because they started looking offsite for signals about search rankings.

The days before Google’s innovation were the peak of onsite SEO. Google turned search on its head by focusing more on what other websites were saying about your website through links rather than anything you put on your site itself. PageRank changed search forever and helped to eliminate some of the poor spammy techniques that websites employed for the sake of getting search engine traffic. Of course, with any good thing comes the bad parts and spammers started learning how to manipulate offsite signals as well.

This persisted until about a year ago. It was at SXSW 2012 that Google’s Matt Cutts and Bing’s Duane Forrester told SEO guru Danny Sullivan that changes were in the works to help rein in offsite link spamming. A month and a half later on April 24th, search was changed forever with the introduction of the Penguin search algorithm update. It helped to eliminate a lot of the offsite spamming techniques, enough so to take some companies out of the SEO business (or out of business altogether).

The pre-PageRank days were the only ones when having the right website made more of a difference than it does today. With the rise of content marketing as a hub for SEO and social media marketing rather than a component of the two disciplines, having the strongest possible website content is essential in promoting a brand on search as well as social media sites like Facebook. You can’t just have a website and drive links to it anymore. Today, you have to “bring it” from a quality perspective. While it’s possible to have a business website that stays completely focused on the task of selling your products and services, it’s better to have one that’s diverse with information, articles, and other pieces of content that bring value to the visitors whether they want to buy something or not.

Google is smart. Bing may be smarter, albeit not at marketing themselves. They can tell the difference between SEO content and valuable content for the website visitors much better than most are will to admit. SEO spam is dying. Bulk is dying. Today, the search engines want to see effort. They want you to amaze people with the content you put on your website.

In the coming weeks, we will be talking more about this subject. It’s not a focal point of this tech blog, but it’s important to mix in useful information about such topics that are close to the heart of many of our readers. Be sure to subscribe in the box to the right so you’ll know when we post similar articles. In the meantime, check out this amazing collection of 8-bit pop culture Donkey Kong art.Here’s an infographic about modern link-building by Kings Web Media. While I don’t agree 100% with their conclusions, it’s a strong basic overview of the way that link-building has changed. It’s not that link building is dead and onsite SEO rules. It’s that link-building should be geared around high-quality content on the website.Link Building Basics 2013

What bomb will Google drop this year at SXSW?

Last year, SXSW was relatively laid back. We had a couple of executives there, but for the most part it was our search and social team that was in attendance, catching tidbits of information here or there but really we were there to meet with some people outside of our core business in the automotive industry. Then, something happened. Matt Cutts from Google and Duane Forrester of Bing dropped a bombshell on the audience. They both declared that quality was moving up in he search algorithms, that quantity was going to be a bad thing, and that spammers would be roughed up in the coming weeks.

The result a month later was the Penguin algorithm as well as Bing’s unnamed variation and search engine marketing was changed forever. Some companies shut down. Others had to make dramatic changes in order to survive. We were put into a better position than ever before thanks to the change, but it still took a lot of research and testing to get it to the point that it’s at today.

This year, we’re going in heavy – the CEO, CFO, VP of Marketing, VP of Internet Marketing Products, and the Director of New Media of new media are heading down to Austin to pay close attention to everything from Facebook to Google to whatever new things are coming down the pipe. A recent operation will put me on the sidelines for this one, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be watching from afar.

What does Google have planned? This year, the same trio of Cutts, Forrester, and SEO genius Danny Sullivan are participating in the panel called “How to Rank Better in Google and Bing”. We anticipate that there will be another bomb dropped, possibly the prelude to the mythical Zebra algorithm. Regardless of what it is, it’s important for everyone in search and social to be paying very close attention to what’s happening down there. Both Google and Bing have had success using the more casual SXSW atmosphere to spark questions and launch changes because it’s not as “dangerous” as revealing things at SES, SMX, or any of the marketing-heavy conferences. SXSW is a party as much as it is a convention; the festival roots make it a safe venue to drop bombs.

What’s coming down the pipe for 2013? We’ll find out this coming week.

Why social signals are only going to get bigger in search rankings

The last time I was involved with search engine optimization, Alta Vista was a player. I was working on my own sites and making a killing by taking advantage of the new world of search engines. Yahoo was making its move to the top. Google wasn’t even a word at the time.

Flash forward to 2007 and social media became my thing. I was able to drive great traffic with the social news sites and started really getting involved the marketing components in 2008. That’s when JD Rucker and I hooked up and started working the various social angles for clients, but he would always handle the search engine components. At the time, I never thought I would get back into SEO, but things have changed since before the Penguin update. We knew it was coming – listening to Google’s Matt Cutts and Bing’s Duane Forrester at the first SXSW I’d ever attended made us realize that the things I was doing in social would soon apply to search.

Fast forward to today. Social signals are a big thing. Many websites are able to make exceptional moves up in the search rankings through social signals alone. Now, rumors are spreading about a social-focused update called Zebra. Chances are good that it’s just a rumor, but the data that we’ve seen shows spikes in social signal influence over search when the signals are real. Those who are buying fake +1s, getting retweets from spam accounts, or inflating their Facebook likes are not seeing the same results that we are.

Social signals are the easiest way for the search engines to get human interaction with pages that they can monitor and utilize in rankings. There is no reason to believe that the usefulness will slow down. What will happen is that they will figure out more ways to sniff out the spammers. They’re already doing it with reviews; those who create accounts and write reviews with no past or future activity end up getting removed.

The point is that the rumors that social signals are losing value in search are being spread by those who are not putting out strong content that is able to get real social shares. Social signals simply make sense. They’ll be effective for the foreseeable future.

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“Like” image courtesy of Shutterstock.

In search, having the right website is more important than (almost) ever

What bomb will Google drop this year at SXSW?

Why social signals are only going to get bigger in search rankings

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