SEO: Succeeding in Moderation
Search engine optimisation is not about having a gung ho attitude. It isn’t about bravado. It certainly isn’t about trying to spam Google. Good SEO is done with balance and audience firmly in mind.
It’s all well and good trying to create a decent link building programme, but if you get carried away, find thousands of previously undiscovered directories or release a few hundred unhelpful articles to a variety of submission sites, you’ll get yourself nowhere. Search engine crawlers may be robots, but they’re not easily fooled.
When you start spamming the search engines, they get annoyed. Thousands of new links appearing overnight isn’t natural, particularly for a site that has a very low existing PageRank. You want as many links as possible, that goes without saying, but you have to do it naturally and progressively.
The same is true of keywords. We know that they can have an effect, how much is up for debate, but you can’t just start spraying them left right and centre. Your website will almost certainly suffer as a consequence. Not only will users not be able to read your content, but they might not be able to find you. Search engines aren’t impressed by sites who try to game their system with keyword stuffing; in fact, they will most likely punish you by dropping your position within their rankings.
SEO has to be learnt and it has to be respected. There’s no doubt of the potential good that it can achieve; but there are also downsides to. The Internet is continually trying to clean up its act. The search engines in particular have worked tirelessly to improve their SERPs. This is perceived to be bad news for those who practise SEO; however, the truth is that it is only bad news for those who practise bad SEO.
If you show restraint, follow the rules and don’t try to get one over on your competition, you can create a site that is strong and will gain rankings where you need them. You don’t need to try to be too clever, focus on the quality of your content, ensure the site is free from errors and all your Meta and site tags are all optimised for the correct phrases.
SEO can be straightforward when done properly. Yes there are many individual components to consider, but as a gradual process you can see the fruits of your labour every time the search engines update their rankings. Even if you’re frustrated by the speed of progress, keep the faith and stick to your guns. Good sites that are properly optimised will always rank well, eventually at least.
