3 Essentials to Success in Organic Search
Are you an SEO practitioner or website owner looking for the magic recipe to better rankings, more traffic and more conversions? Believe it or not, there is a magic recipe for SEO success and it works like gangbusters. Magic here does not mean easy, but it does mean tried and true.
A quote from SEO Refuge, an SEO blogger, sums up this magic recipe. It reads as follows: “The three essential elements of effective SEO are effective communication, useful information, and quality backlinks.”
These three elements are critical to a successful SEO campaign. Effective communication has to do with the information architecture of your website. Your website should be developed on an SEO friendly platform, and it should be developed in a way that adheres to information architecture best practices.
Useful information (i.e. website content) should serve as the best possible answer to the query typed in by the searcher. There is no substitute for good content. Keep it clear and concise so your visitors can quickly find what they are seeking.
Finally, links are one of the foundational elements of Google’s search algorithm. Google describes back links as a uniquely democratic process by which an individual webpage’s value can be determined. Links are to your website what citations are to book, papers and other scholarly works.
Latest Developments in Google
Before going deeper into each essential element of a well run organic search campaign, let’s take a look at current developments in Google and what they spell out for information architecture, content and link building practices.
Information Architecture Matters
In recent months, Google has explicitly stated that page speed is a crucial component to user experience. There have been hints that page speed along with other architecturally based elements will begin to be considered in the algorithm. As a result, website architecture is going to become more important. Optimizing the architectural elements of your website will have a major impact on user experience, as well as improving your visibility objectives in the SERPs.
Quality Content is Key
Just recently (Feb 2011), Google made significant changes to its search algorithm. These changes improved Google’s capacity to look at additional signals when determining search quality. The algorithm change was named Panda, and it has had a major impact on how search listings are served up. The purpose of the update was to downgrade webpages that presented low content quality signals, which ultimately had the effect of upgrading those pages that presented better content quality signals.
Link Building is Evolving
Link building is another area related to SEO that’s rapidly evolving. In previous years, backlinks represented the most qualified way to cite content. It’s still very important today to focus on building backlinks to your website. Though the nature of how backlinks are distributed to websites is changing, the fundamental idea of using a back link to represent a vote of confidence will remain for the foreseeable future.
In addition, social media mentions and social media links are now starting to provide additional information to the search engines about the popularity and timeliness of content. With the advent of the Google +1 option and other social media devices, the search engines are moving towards better understanding social data and including it in their evaluation process.
In general, it seems that Google is moving further along the route of rewarding quality SEO practices. As the casualties from Google’s Panda update demonstrate, applying SEO essentials to your website is becoming ever more important to maintaining your search engine rankings.
Applying the 3 Essentials for Success
Information Architecture
Now, let’s go into more detail regarding how information architecture, content development and link building contribute to success in organic search. We will start with the foundation of all search success, which is your website’s information architecture. Information architecture is the process of structuring, organizing and labeling your website to improve findability and usability.
Here are a few elements to look for when evaluating your information architecture:
- Is your website navigation obvious? If not, make it so. Your website should be arranged in a way that’s easy to navigate. The easier it is for visitors to navigate your site, the easier it will be for search engine crawlers to crawl your site. For navigation purposes, your directories should be arranged in a hierarchical manner. Furthermore, your content should be logically organized using a category -> sub category -> sub-sub category structure. Building your website out this way encourages the search engines to do a deeper crawl of your site. It also helps the search engines better understand your site in context, and understand the relationship between the various pages and page types on your website.
- Keep the important information at the top. Search engines are not as smart as people, but they think like people. Content that is displayed first is considered to be more important than content that is displayed last. This is true of content as it appears in a directory structure, as well as content as it appears on a webpage. When analyzing your website, you want to make sure that your most important content appears high in the directory structure. Also, at page level, you want to make sure the most important content appears at the top of the webpage.
Content Development
Once you’ve optimized your information architecture, the next step is to optimize your on-page and code level content. Here are a few elements to consider when optimizing your content:
- Meta matters. The
meta information for your webpages is important and provides valuable
signals to the search engines about the nature of the content. Meta information here means information that
describes information. It includes your
title tags, header tags, meta descriptions, and other meta tags.
- Keep it fresh. Search engines are keen on fresh
content. Typically, when a website is consistently
publishing fresh content, it sends a signal to website crawlers. The crawlers will be compelled to revisit the
website more often in order to have the most up-to-date site information in its
index.
With that being said, it’s beneficial, from a search engine standpoint, to refresh your content whenever possible. You can use a blog, article index, company news index or the like to keep the content updated on your website.
- Keep it interesting. Content is the reason that people visit your website. A searcher arrives on your site from Google, Bing or some other search engine. Based on where you are positioned in the search engine results, there is some degree of confidence that your website has the answer to a question the searcher is seeking. Approach this matter earnestly. Furthermore, make sure to provide the best possible answer to the question asked in the query when you build out your content strategy. If you approach the development of your content this way, it will go a long way in building trust with searchers and search engines.
Link Building
After you’ve built an architecturally sound site and added compelling content, the last essential element for success in organic search is link building. Links are one of the key indicators used to determine whether or not a webpage is valuable to searchers. Below are a few key considerations when building out a link building program.
Avoid the following quick fixes:
- Buying Links: Currently, buying links can boost your website’s visibility in the search engines, but Google engineers are working intently to stamp out this practice. Buying links goes against Google’s best practices for link building. It’s best to avoid this strategy because you will be penalized if you are caught.
- Cloaking Links: Cloaking links, or hiding them from the search engines, is another practice that violates Google’s guidelines for building links. Avoid using any clever schemes to hide links, or you’ll be penalized if caught.
- Link Spam: Commenting on blogs and other website types simply for the purpose of getting a link to your website is also discouraged. Furthermore, link spam can be time consuming and very rarely leads to long term success in organic search.
Apply these quality link building practices instead:
- Answer a Question/Solve a problem: You can browse the internet to find popular problems related to your industry. Look to sites like Ask.com, Ask Yahoo or similar sites to find out where consumers or business are having problems and produce a quality piece of content that provides a solution to the problem. You can then go out and shop that piece of content to other websites. They may be willing to publish your content with a link back to your website. This is a great way to build links and create relationships that have the potential to provide long term benefits.
- Take advantage of social Media: Using social media websites like Twitter, Linked in, or blog sites is another opportunity to promote your content. You can visit these various sites and join their communities. If you spend time to get to know these communities, and if you offer quality solutions to the problems that exist, it’s acceptable to offer up a link to your website for more information. Be sincere in your participation with these groups and learn their rules to avoid any backlash from creating spammy postings.
There are many other creative ways to build out your backlink profile. Approach link building as you would building a business relationship. Developing business relationships require patience, cooperation and a good value exchange. You can look at link building the same way.
Refining your website’s information architecture, creating compelling content, and developing a strong link profile are essential elements to long term success in the search engines. If you execute these elements of SEO in a logical way that focuses on the user experience, you’ll benefit greatly from the effort. In this same way, 360 Partners excels at delivering a more holistic approach to SEO. Make the decision to build an organic search strategy that stands the test of time, and builds immunity against the wild fluctuations that some sites experience with algorithm changes. Contact us at SearchMarketing@360Partners.com for a complete audit of your SEO campaign and get moving towards online success today.
About the author: Sidney Nicholas is lead SEO Specialist for 360 Partners. He has been actively managing SEO campaigns since 2006. His online marketing beliefs center around a holistic approach to SEO. His focus is on developing strategies that provide long term value to site owners and search engines.
