The ever changing, never changing landscape of SEO
For small and growing businesses, conquering the basic aspects of SEO is an important step in building their company profile, boosting brand awareness and attracting new customers. If they can secure a good Google ranking, the business’ website will be easier to find and the organisation will become more visible to potential customers on the web.
As most people who’ve working on SEO will know, Google, and other major search engines, regularly update the algorithms they use to rank web pages. For some, this can make it feel like the SEO goalposts are always moving, something that can make professionals feel overwhelmed when they’re trying to make their homepage more visible.
But is the SEO landscape really shifting under our feet or is it just perception that never stays still? We thought we’d take a closer look at the building blocks of SEO to find out.
What does change in SEO?
Google is constantly updating its algorithms to make its results more relevant and to weed out pages that are trying to trick their way to a higher page ranking. As a result, companies that practice underhand SEO techniques are constantly having to update their SEO methods to get past Google’s ever more complex algorithms.
Back to basics
One thing that hasn’t changed about SEO is its fundamental principles. Like most search engines, Google’s algorithms are designed to work out what a site is about and rank its reliability. In order for Google to be able to easily access a site, the web page needs to be crawlable. Keywords need to be used regularly and naturally to help Google determine what the site is about and backlinks (links from other sites) should be employed to help the search engine calculate the site’s trustworthiness.
If a website has been created with these principles in mind, webmasters shouldn’t have to do too much to keep their site in line with best SEO practices. Although there are a lot more techniques that can be employed to boost search engine rankings, abiding by SEO fundamentals will get a company off on the right foot.
The goalposts are just becoming more refined
Rather than constantly shifting, SEO’s goalposts are just becoming more refined. In essence, Google is simply trying to ensure it ranks sites that are trustworthy, authoritative and expert at the top of its results page. Google refers to these criteria using the acronym EAT – Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Sites that meet these criteria are much more likely to be viewed as high quality by the search engine and therefore to achieve a good ranking on the results page.
There are various techniques that can be used to demonstrate to Google that your site meets the EAT criteria. High quality back links, regularly updated blogs, informative copy that provides real value to the reader and a clear site structure will all help your SEO efforts, especially if you push all elements at the same time.
The core principles don’t change
At the end of the day, Google, and other search engines, are simply trying to work out what your site is about and what information it provides. They also try to determine if it provides the best answer or product for the users’ needs and if it demonstrates EAT. Google wants to ensure that the results it displays for users when they make a request are informative and relevant and that the content they contain can be relied on.
Although the basic building blocks of SEO don’t really change, the techniques we use to demonstrate to Google that a website meets its criteria do slowly evolve. To find out more about good SEO practices and the latest SEO trends, explore our site today.