Sustainable SEO consists of search engine optimization concepts, strategies and tactics that stand the test of time.
Good SEO means understanding how search engines work and giving them what they want. (It’s the same thing your customers want.)
Yes, SEO is continually evolving – but the core of what the search engines want has not. They want to provide the best search results for their users. The algorithms that power the ranking are tweaked all the time and sometimes undergo more substantial updates. But they are always going in the same direction they have been since the beginning – to give searchers what they want – fast, relevant, trustworthy solutions to their questions.
Some SEOs will employ tactics that try to ‘trick’ the search engines temporarily – emphasis on temporarily. This is a very risky approach for your business. Most of the major updates the search engines implement are to reduce what they call ‘web-spam’ by penalizing the websites they think are trying to game the system.
So instead of trying to outsmart Google, our philosophy of SEO is to give them what they want. While there are over 200 factors that go into the algorithm, here are the main, durable elements:
- Relevancy
- Authority
- Trustworthy
- Freshness
- User Experience
- Location
Having effective search engine optimization centers around having good content. Content that:
- is focused on the keyword phrases people are searching for
- encourages other websites and blogs to link to your website
- shows you are an authority
- is updated on a regular basis to give your website ‘freshness’
- will be shared in social media, thus giving positive social signals
