With announcements from the major search engines happening all the time, many SEO providers are still using out of date methods to gain traction with search rankings. We’ve kept track of Google’s changes over time, as evident with our Predicting Panda postings from a short time back. Working in SEO means that we have to be ever vigilant when it comes to search relevance. The key at this point in time is moderation – SEO strategies that are enough to impress a user and a search engine without being overblown. Here are some of the ways we’re staying ahead of the curve.

Real Content, Written by Professionals

The core of all SEO is well-written content. Articles that are thrown together, poorly worded, and grammatically incompetent don’t pass muster with users. Our writers work with all of our clients to produce highly polished and pertinent articles that not only employ SEO, but do so without compromising quality. They strive to avoid the syntax misappropriations that are the hallmark of bad SEO. If the average user can tell that words aren’t falling the right way, it’s a good bet a search engine algorithm can, too.

The same is true for keyword density – a hot issue in the SEO community. Google has stated openly that it plans to penalize results that abuse keywords. This doesn’t mean that your site won’t benefit from SEO done right. What it does mean is that our writers have to work even harder to provide information, rather than boiler-plate articles with keywords used as many times as possible. Those sorts of articles raise huge red flags – both for users and for search engines. When a visitor to your site becomes aware of SEO, they’ll likely stop reading the content. That user bouncing away from your site is one fewer conversion you will have. Providing good information with natural keyword use is the key to pleasing your customers.

Link Building

The Panda update changed the rules for link building, but it didn’t totally break past practices. Even though some of the old tricks still work, we’re constantly on the hunt for new techniques to spread awareness of your site. This practice has a dual advantage. Not only will your site rank higher the stronger its web presence, the increased visibility will get you visitors on its own, even if the search engines take some time to place you in that coveted number one position. The search engines no longer respond well to the “content factory” type sites – at least not as well as they used to. By embracing social media and ongoing content, your site will get the attention it deserves.

If you have any questions about employing SEO for your website, or if you’d like to discuss a site overhaul with SEO features, schedule a free 30 minute consultation. There are lots of false promises and shady guarantees in the business of SEO. Instead of that, we boast our #1 ranked successes. Feel free to browse our clients and see for yourself. The key to SEO, at this point, is strong writing, good information, and adaptation. We’ve got all three.