There was a time, not so very long ago, when the business of optimizing websites for prime listings on Google and the other search engines was in the hands of rascals who practiced some of the most underhanded tricks in order to achieve prominence for themselves and for their grotesquely overcharged clients.
Pages and pages of inarticulate nonsense stuffed with keywords used entirely outside of any kind of grammatical context, hidden code and even keywords typed in the same color as the background to the website, thus rendering it invisible to the visitor, were commonplace. It was a frustrating time to have been a creative writer. Nobody wanted classy, good quality content – just keywords and illiterate babble.
Today, thankfully, Google has wised up, and has made it pretty clear that what it most wants to see listed on its search engine is high quality content of the kind that readers actually like to see when surfing for general information. With its newer algorithms, which enjoy such delightful names as Penguin and Panda, quality content is here to stay.
Is There Still a Role for Strategic Thinking in SEO?
So with Google’s belated recognition that decent content is superior to gobbledegook with keywords and should be ranked as such, is there any need any more for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Undoubtedly the answer is yes, because although content is rewarded for its quality there are still criteria at play through which that quality is assessed. And for as long as there are rules to play by, strategic thinking dictates that contact should be targeted according to those rules.
As far as subject matter is concerned, this is largely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter a great deal whether you are selling used cars or the finest weed, sentence structure and literacy are now king where once the inane garbled chanting of keywords reigned supreme. Intelligent spiders have arrived.
Internal and External SEO
The other reason why SEO remains important is that much of it is undertaken externally, by generating or encouraging inbound links from outside sources such as websites with good search authority recognition, or authority. This is an entirely different science to populating your own website or blog with good quality content, for you are linking in from a site which is outside of your own editorial control.
Internal SEO, by contrast, is about what you write on your own website. It is totally within your gift to alter or amend it. This is where your creative text and keywords need to be for maximum effect.
A joined-up SEO strategy involves the use of both external and internal tools in order to maximize the exposure of your website. When you work them together in a synchronized way then that is when it becomes a plan as opposed to a solitary random act.
SEO remains essential if you are to attract progressively more visitors to your site, and if your strategy is a good one these will be targeted visitors too.
