I’m writing this article in early 2013, and that’s quite important to understand in terms of how up to date this information is in terms of what works for SEO and Google rankings.
Google has been changing the way their algorithms work since they first started, and the trend has been that they’ve tried to move away from rewarding spam tactics or black hat SEO.
When the site first started, it had a very simple algorithm. Every site had a certain amount of page rank, and when it linked to another site, a bit of that page rank got passed on.
So, the pages that had the largest amount of link weight leading to them got the highest page rank, and that was seen as an important ranking factor.
As soon as everyone found out about this algorithm, they created literally billions of sites that were designed for no other purpose than to manipulate this algorithm, for better rankings.
What Happened To SEO?
To cut a long story short, most of the things which used to work don’t work anymore, or don’t work as effectively.
Things such as multiple social bookmarking links, blog comments, forum signatures, directory submissions, spun articles on auto-approve sites, low quality paid blog reviews, profile links, etc.
Some of these things still work a little bit, but only if they look like they were made in a natural way.
What Google is really looking for is the links that look like they were created by other people, for example social media shares.
If a site is extremely valuable and popular, or entertaining and important, then one of the first natural signs you will see is a regular amount of shares of that site by different people to their Facebook friends, Twitter followers, Google Plus followers, etc.
Another thing they might do is link to the site from blog posts and articles, but most people don’t write on the lower quality sites, so there are only some blogs and article writing sites which manage to keep any authority in the eyes of Google.
That’s pretty much it, you will want a few links from the description of You Tube videos, links from a Facebook page or two, from multiple Twitter accounts, maybe a Linked In share, or a few Stumble Upon likes.
You might want multiple articles leading back to the page you’re trying to rank, and links leading to those pages as well, to form a link pyramid.
Social media links are no follow, which means they do not pass on page rank, but they are far from useless, in fact they are completely essential in creating the natural looking link profile that Google is looking for.
Therefore, what works in SEO today is writing, having people write about you, and sharing a lot on social media, and encouraging social sharing.
Some companies spend all their time trying to create viral content such as funny You Tube videos, as if it works, it can beat ranking at the top of a huge Google search.
Nothing works better than having a page spread through word of mouth, but even if you don’t go viral, social media is still an essential part of SEO these days.
For some help with any and all of these things, send me a message, my email is in the sidebar. I’m pretty sure I can help you with SEO if you’re trying to rank a site, and I can especially help with the social media side of it.
