Search Engine Optimization
A term that every marketeer surely has encountered a few times in his career. SEO has, just like digitale marketing, changed a lot through the years. Even now, 2019, nobody sure of ALL of the influences on SEO and nobody has been able to crack the code to âthe perfect SEO websiteâ.
Of course itâs our job (but mostly our passion, yeah, really) to be up-to-date with all of the changes within SEO. We also have read tons of blogs and articles. To make it easier for you, weâll be linking to some of the articles from our âhigh quality contentâ library.
A little bit of history: Age of the gurus a.k.a. ârank and bankâ
Those who knew a lot about SEO in the early 2000âs were literally sitting on a goldmine. A lot of online marketing âgurusâ took advantage of this, as they should. A basic but SEO optimised website of webshop could quickly evolve to a good ranked page that monthly got more than a few thousands of visitors. It was often enough to just repeat the most important keywords a few times, en Google did the rest.
When you worked with ads or as an affiliate you could earn a good amount of money on a short term. From the moment this website was set everything could run on automatic pilot, and you could copy this approach on another niche. And if you were very lucky, only one successful landingspage was enough to make millions.
But that time of ârank & bankâ is slowly coming to an end.
What are the basic requirements for good SEO?
Until this day, nobody can say with they know for a 100% how the algorithm of Google exactly works. The biennial research of Moz does show us a clearer image of the ranking factors that have the most influence. This research also shows how much SEO has changed over the last few years. The latest Google updates force brands to a more user-centered approach where quality and user experience are the focus. Weâve takled about this transition of SEO to CEO (Customer Experience Optimisation) in a previous post.
The cause of these changes we have to thank to the fact that the search behaviour of the user strongly evolved. Mobile-friendly isnât just an option anymore, but rather a necessity. Local Search wins and people nowadays have more platforms to look for information, reviews or ratings. Take Youtube for example. They have gained a lot of ⊠the last few years because a lot of users post a lot of hands-on product reviews and they link directly to the product pages. Of think of the hundreds of comparison websites who make the use of Google unnecessary for some.
The challenge lays in the fact that internet users nowadays expect to find the best results with the littlest amount of effort. Modern SEO requires technical, creative and strategic input and that will keep evolving.
Now you have to focus more on:
- strong and consistent brand awareness through all the digital channels,
- contain a certain social influence on the different social media channels,
- optimal landingspages,
- experiment with visual content,
- a relevant and mobile friendly platform thatâs accessible from either location or device,
- that your website and content is up-to-date
Ranking on the first page of Google is a privilege but luckily also not a necessity. A higher place in Google doesnât immediately mean an increase in sales. âKnowing the rankings for a set of keywords doesnât really give you an idea of performance, itâs just a numberâ.
