The New Rules of SEO
The rules of SEO, Search Engine Optimization, have changed in recent years, leaving marketers scrambling to try to find new ways to get free traffic from the search engines. The old rules either no longer apply, or do not carry as much weight in the search engine algorithms, or formulas, that determine what position a URL gets in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
The main formula
There are three main elements to most search engine algorithms:
- Content
- Authority
- Age of the domain
Content is, of course, the most important. The words on the page are signals as to what it is about. Search engines then determine relevance based on those words. Some words are more important signals than others. These are called keywords. Keywording your press releases can help give you a higher relevance score and therefore a higher place at the top of the search engines.
Authority is determined by the number of quality links pointing to your site, and your amount of traffic. In the old days, marketers tried to get as many links as possible. Google cracked down on this and penalized sites with paid links, poor quality links, or link circles with everyone giving each other reciprocal links. These days, to establish authority, you need great content, and an audience interested in it.
Age of domain
Older websites tend to get a little more highly rewarded than new ones, in part because they probably have more quality links built up over time. Even if your site is quite new, you can still get traffic if you use one of the press release distribution services. Many of them have been around for quite a few years and count as aged domains. Just keep building up your site steadily and you will establish all three of these main criteria.
Other important influencers
There are several other factors to keep in mind when it comes to new SEO rules.
1-Page speed
Google and other search engines reward faster sites. No one wants to wait around for their information. Keep your home page uncluttered. Compress any images to speed up their load time.
2-Mobile friendliness
Make sure your content is mobile friendly. Google in particular rewards sites that are designed well for mobile. You can either have a separate mobile site or use WordPress for blogging and website creation. All of its most recent themes that control the appearance of a site are mobile-friendly.
3-Media
Video, audio, podcasts, and images can all get you additional listings in relation to a page, not just the content on the page itself. Be sure to name all of these items using keywords to boost your SEO and make it clear what the audience can expect.
4-Don’t run a lot of ads
This will lower your relevance score in many cases. If you can’t avoid it, see if it is possible to run the ads below the fold, that is, under the first glimpse of the page a person gets when they click to view your site.
5-Leverage social media
Social media is a great way to make yourself more visible and get backlinks. The links may not count for much with the search engine algorithms, but the traffic to your site will.
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