Last Month, I wrote about the death of Guest Blogging as an SEO tool, and it got me thinking. What has happened to real business marketing? For many SME’s, over the past few years, all too often marketing has boiled down to:
- Get a website
- Get good search rankings
- Customers will find you
Couple this with the constant bombardment of emails telling you that your website is missing out on vital search traffic, and offering (for a fee) to help you out, and you can be forgiven for thinking that SEO is THE marketing tool available to SMEs. I have never agreed with this point of view. Lets look at the history of SEO and the techniques used be Search Engine Optimisers:
- First it was all about keywords, people abused this by inappropriately stuffing keywords to manipulate Google’s algorithm, so Google changed the algorithm to prevent this – RIP Keyword Stuffing as an SEO tool
- Next came links – SEOs abused this by creating spammy, valueless links to the site to manipulate Google’s algorithm, so Google changed the algorithm to prevent this – RIP Link Building as an SEO tool
- Next came content & guest blogging – SEOs abused this by creating spammy, valueless content to manipulate Google’s algorithm, so Google changed the algorithm to prevent this – RIP Guest Blogging as an SEO tool
Could there be a pattern forming here?
Through all of this our advice has been consistent: Google want to see top quality information and content from topic experts at the top of their listings. If you create a well built site:
- That is easily accessible by the Google spiders
- That contains good quality, up to date, relevant content
- That contains appropriate keywords (yes they are still relevant)…..
Google want people to find that content, so will not be working to keep it out of their listings. On top of this, if you are in a niche market (and many of our clients are). People want to read your content and will seek you out, so building a solid mechanism to promote the content through tools like email, social media, and (yes) relevant guest blogging is a sound marketing strategy that works, and will not be the victim of the Google’s fight against “the Next Big Marketing Idea”. Over the next few weeks we will be looking at how, as an SME you can build a solid, sustainable, Marketing strategy that delivers real results. We are about solid sustainable, effective web marketing. If you want a marketing strategy that does not live or die by Google’s next algorithm change, we would love to talk to you!
