Over the past few years almost everyone has been hammered and taken back to school with the algorithm updates of the most popular search engines. Why do I say almost? Because not everyone gets affected and some benefit from the updates- namely those employing tried-and-true marketing tactics.
We reviewed all of the many reports, tasks, and results of our clients over the past few years and we found that unless we attempted a short cut, no major losses occurred so long as we were abiding by the following principles:
- Research
- Content
- Authority
- UX
- Engagement
What Doesn’t Work for SEO:
- Purchasing cheap mass quantities of back-links on sites that have been marked as spam.
- Cheap overseas article spinning
- Grey hat methods (untested hacks that are in-between white & black hat)
- Doing what everyone else is doing
What Does Work for SEO:
- Qualitative research on terms, semantics, and trends
- Quantitative research on what it takes to rank versus the current competition
- Solid multi-tiered campaigns that cross platforms
- AB testing
- Code Compliance
- Highly researched content with supporting documentation
- Press
- Social & Feedback Signals
Making the Cut
Some people may say that they are doing all that, but if you are doing that and you are not in the top 10 and it has been greater than 60-90 days you are either out of your league or missing some key components. Let me give you an example: A private college in California hired us to assist with their SEO with a strong focus on technicals and after just a few short weeks their traffic tripled to over 15k hits a day and has remained at that level with continued growth for the past 6 months. We did not do campaigns, social, or AB testing – just straight speed, code compliance, and optimization on-page and we had great results because they already had strong content, tons of it in fact, along with a healthy amount of traffic. They were lacking just one piece of the puzzle, so the question remains: What are you lacking?
When I speak with prospective clients I tell them the same thing every time- 60-90 days to shift rankings and top 3 packs are possible if you have a budget to match the competition. If there is little to no competition you can do it quickly and cheaply. But if you are dealing with large startups and established companies with tens of millions in net profit you have a lot of ground to cover. It is not impossible- I have been able to rank companies alongside Google, Microsoft, Redhat, & more top name brands.
New Content by Got.Media
I have decided to start making videos and more content to really explain what to do for SEO. So stay tuned for step by step guides on what you should do to boost your rankings. For those looking for help, check out some of our plans here.