Quality beyond Visibility

With all the content and discussion about search engine optimization online, it’s easy for people to assume that visibility is the name of the game. Get that top spot on the search engine rankings, and you’ve won the online marketing battle. While top ranking on search engines is a worthy goal, don’t assume that appeasing the bots and spiders that crawl your site is the target you must aim for.

User Experience

We know this intuitively, but with all the shots fired in the midst of our digital marketing campaigns, we forget the importance of user experience. You could put high-ranking keywords, formulate barely-relevant meta tags, and use other aggressive tactics to put yourself on the radar of your customers. Maybe they’ll go visit your site. But will they find themselves pleased to have found their way to you, or will they feel disappointed, lost in a labyrinth of confusing links and worthless linkbait?

Content Relevance

Some things don’t ever change, and a timeless concept of marketing has been the “WIIFM”, or “What’s in it for me”. Don’t assume that you can just write and post content every week, and that is enough to get points. Think about the relevance of your content. Who are you writing for? How can you help? What problems do they face that you can assist with? What content can satisfy and delight your site’s visitors? Giving people reasons to stay and browse your site is more important than getting them to come.

Google Takes Notice

Google is king of the search engines for a reason: it keeps users in mind when they rank websites in their results. Just as recently as July, Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed that there is an update to the Panda algorithm that will be slowly rolled out, impacting 2-3% of search engine queries. Because it’s a slow rollout, the impact wasn’t expected to be apparent for a few months. Have there been any changes? Maybe. To be sure, you’ll want to keep abreast of all the best online marketing news and insights from reliable subject matter experts.