I may have mentioned before that website promotion is more research than glitz and glamour. For me I find statistics and trends fascinating but not in a boring way. I actually hated mathematics in my formative years due mostly to the unapproachable attitude of my teacher.
When I am working on website promotion I don’t see it as math, I see it more like forensic science. What has happened, why has it happened, what has changed, what could have caused things to happen, what changes have I made and what impact have they had.
There are people in this space with far higher understanding than mine, peers if you will. One such person is Rand Fishkin of Moz. For the last few years Rand has presented his predictions for the coming year, he covers a lot of area in this field from who might buy who, which companies are likely to disappear and which companies will go from strength to strength. Rand also takes an educated guess on what is going to take place with regard to search engines and how SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages) will be presented.
Google Rates Content over SEO
I read with interest Rand’s predictions for 2015, as always these predictions make me think and look at the trends that I have seen myself. Before I go any further let me say that when people use words like search engines or names like Google, Bing and Yahoo, the only facts that can be given are historical. Everything going forward is educated guesswork, predicted behaviour following trends, wild speculation or insider knowledge. To be honest we can forget the last one!
Google holds an interesting position in what is really a three horse race! They are when all is said and done a Search Engine, a programme that enables you to search the internet for specific things. Its job is to provide you with results that are relevant based on your search word or phrase. If Tesco were to create a search engine based on its online shopping model, I believe it would fall at the first hurdle. “We couldn’t find Dog Grooming so we have substituted your search with Knitting!” Frustration would soon kick-in.
Most of Google’s updates and changes have been to ensure the most relevant search results based on content rich websites and to punish those who have entered the into the dark side of optimisation. Google has made it quite clear that it really doesn’t like anyone who tries to promote a site above its natural organic position.
How Will This Affect Your Website? My Predictions
Based on looking at what has passed, the trends as I see them and listening to the rumbles online, I predict that Content Marketing will over-take Search Engine Optimisation as we know it.
Here’s why.
Google can see that there are people paying good money to many SEO ‘experts’, who are in their eyes getting paid to alter Google’s search results in an artificial way. So why wouldn’t Google want to cut out the middle man and have people pay Google direct for paid advertising and pay per click marketing. It makes perfect business sense, undermine your enemy and increase your revenue.
This will not change the fact that relevant, good quality, fresh content is vital, these factors will now become even more important. Combined with traffic directed from social media feeds and external links to pages deep within your site.
Search Engine Optimisation is a dying trade, Content Marketing should be the focus now. Create good content on a regular basis and then find the best ways to promote it through the channels that are available. Take a look here to find out more about Content Marketing and how important it is.
In short; in order to fare well in 2015, a well-constructed website with great, regularly updated content that embraces social media is a must have, not an option! That is unless you want to pay Google to alter their own index on your behalf.
