CT Web Marketing Blog

When people talk about the old days of SEO, they might just be talking about a few months ago. That is how fast things change with the search engines. Google changes its search engine algorithm five or six times every year. The goal of the search engines is to make searches more efficient for users. The goal of business websites, especially the small businesses, is to get some of the web traffic generated by user searchers. Efficiency for users and generating website traffic is not always compatible.
One of the recent changes is called “semantic search”. The goal of Google, the makers of this recent update, is to add something of a human element. The new algorithm is designed to “guess” what you are actually searching for. With semantic search, Google is aiming to give users information related to their queries right on the search page. Other websites will still be listed, at least for the time being, but Google will actually be competing with other websites for website traffic.

The goal of this program is not completely clear. Why does Google want non-income generating traffic? Whatever the reason, it is something for e-businesses and other website owners to be aware of.
In the really old days of SEO, keywords were “it”. If you had the right keywords on your webpages and you used them often enough, you could be sure that your website would get high rankings.
Now, Google and other search engines penalize websites for “keyword stuffing”. Just last year, they also announced that they would penalize websites for knowingly posting duplicate content.
Link schemes were also mentioned as something the new “Penguin” algorithm would be looking for and not for good reasons. If link schemes are identified or even suspected, the website could be pushed to the last page of the search engine results.

If you want to attract traffic to your website and you also want to get decent rankings on search engine results for specific keywords, there are some things to keep in mind. The first thing is to be completely honest.

Don’t do any of the things I’ve mentioned that Google doesn’t like. Avoid excessive keyword usage. Keep your content real and unique. Never publish content you have copied from another website.
Take advantage of other Internet marketing tools. Don’t rely too heavily on the search engines to get traffic to your site. Use social networks, email, advertising and other “honest” tools to get your traffic.
There is only one thing that we can say for sure about the future of SEO. It will change. If you avoid using tricks to get your website traffic, the changes should have little effect on your business.