1.  Domain Age

The search engines take the age of your website into consideration when determining rank.  The search engines want to provide users with the best possible results, so they favor sites that are trusted.  Inbound links are one indicator of trust, but so is domain age.  To the search engines, a new site needs to earn trust and that takes time.  A website that has been around for a few years will succeed in getting a new page to rank for specific keywords faster than a brand new website.  Any website, regardless of age, should utilize SEO but an older website will see a quicker return.

2.  Competitors

Any smart business has a website and is marketing it online, which means that your competitors are hungry for the same search engine and online real estate that you want.  If your competitors are smart, they’ve been working at SEO for years.  Just getting started now means that you are late to the game and have a lot to catch up on.  Analyze their strategy to find a weakness that you may be able to capitalize on.  However, chances are good that it will be very difficult to ever outperform them if they’ve been executing a thorough white hat SEO strategy on a regular basis for awhile now.

3.  Search Engine Complexity

Google is becoming more transparent and is providing more information to webmasters regarding the algorithms, but we will never know everything.  The algorithms are always changing and personalization has become an important ranking factor.  It’s impossible to determine what the rank will be from one user to the next since results aren’t always the same.  We are at the mercy of the search engines and all we can do is play by the rules.

Conclusion

Just because certain ranking elements are out of our control doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t bother.  Business websites across all industries, new or old, need SEO to survive online.  Results won’t be immediate and depend on many factors, but they will come eventually as long as you keep at it and understand that it takes time.

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Developing an SEO campaign that is focused on rank is the wrong approach for many reasons.  First, ranking fluctuates.  Just because a website has landed the number one spot for a specific keyword or keyword phrase one day, doesn’t mean that it will be number one the next.  Every industry is competitive online and any smart business has invested in SEO to improve their rank, which means that it’s not easy to get to number one or to stay there.

Ranking well is important, but only if you are ranking well for the right keywords or keyword phrases.  It’s important to optimize your website for the keywords that will actually generate traffic and visitors, not for the keywords that will get you to number one.  SEO companies that promise a number one ranking might be able to get you to number one, but not for the keywords that you want to rank for.  It’s easy to rank number one for an obscure or extremely long tail keyword that nobody is actually searching for.  But what’s the point of that?

Another reason to avoid concentrating so much on rank is because search is now personalized.  Two people searching for the same thing will see different results based on factors like previous search history, location, and social media connections and activity.  The search engines want to provide their customers with the best possible search experience and the most relevant results that suit their personal preferences.  This means that search results vary slightly from user to user.

Businesses that don’t understand the nature of ranking sometimes think that they can game the system and end up making bad decisions like dabbling in black hat SEO, which involves implementing tactics that are frowned upon by the search engines.  It may result in short term gain and ranking improvement but it will be short lived.  Once the search engines figure out what is going on any website that practices black hat SEO will be punished and see a severe dip in ranking and traffic.

Sarch engine optimization is certainly about improving rank in the search engines but it’s also about establishing trust amongst target audience members and generating qualified traffic that turns into sales and conversions.

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If you use WordPress for your blog or site, there are plug-ins that can help. Here are five possibilities:

1.  Microdata for WordPress — This free plug-in that integrates in as a button on the TinyMCE Editor (in the Media Buttons Editor area). It lets you generate HTML5 microdata code in your posts and pages by choosing the type of data you want to include, the properties of that data type, and then filling in the values. Types of data (schema) are currently limited to six — Event, Person, Organization, Review, Place and Product — but you can add custom properties to those already shown for each schema via PHP. (Source: www.optimum7.com/internet-marketing/web-development/microdata-for-wordpress.html)

2.  Rich Snippet Creator Module of SEO Ultimate WordPress Plug-In — SEO Design Solutions created the very popular SEO Ultimate plug-in which has a module for creating rich snippets, but it only applies to the “event” schema or data type. Configuration is easy, with usually only the rating scale still needing to be set up. Ability to match WordPress categories with posts that indicate reviews means that even older posts can be set up as rich snippets. (Source: www.seodesignsolutions.com/wordpress-seo/)

3.  Schema For WordPress — This plug-in works to mark up existing content in your WordPress blog. After installation, you activate the “Schema for WordPress” button just in front of where you wish the code to be placed and choose the appropriate items from the drop-down for the properties. Can be a little confusing in application and final appearance for those not used to working in HTML, as attention needs to be paid to placement of div/span codes. (Source: schemaforwordpress.com/)

4.  EasyRecipe — Designed exclusively for use with the “recipe” schema/snippet, once installed, access this plug-in via an icon in the Upload/Insert media icon area. Follow the simple instructions to complete the “add a new recipe” form and all necessary microformat tags will be added. Nice visual representation result. There’s even a button to run the finished product through Google’s Rich Snippet tool to see how it will appear there. (Source: wordpress.org/extend/plugins/easyrecipe/)

5.  Micro Anywhere — This plug-in makes it easy to format and produce content describing events and contact information. Choosing either an event or contact button from the WYSIWYG editor opens a form to input the required properties. Output is a “human readable” paragraph with the appropriate microformat. Still under development, but definitely could be a timesaver. (Source: wordpress.org/extend/plugins/micro-anywhere/)

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If you’re been guilty of taking your eye off the ball since you factored in the Panda deal-breakers to your site and online content, cast your eye over these changes made by Google in the last four weeks and double check that you’re still on course. Failing to keep abreast of these smaller tweaks can make the bigger changes even more devastating to your site if you’re non compliant, making small changes crucial for those serious about good search positioning in the long term.

1.  Cross-language information retrieval

Not as complicated as the title sounds, this simply means that Google makes it easier for those users searching in languages where results may be limited to get relevant English language pages, with the aid of Google translate. The languages affected by this change are Afrikaans, Malay, Slovak, Swahili, Hindi, Norwegian, Serbian, Catalan, Maltese, Macedonian, Albanian, Slovenian, Welsh, Icelandic. Although the Google translate service isn’t foolproof, this change makes it more likely you’ll pick up search traffic and potentially conversions from countries with a first language not represented on your website.

2.  Snippets with more header content

The snippets Google uses to display on its search results page may change significantly as the search engine is now more likely to use text from the page itself than from the title or header of the page, as laid out in the source code. Google say that they are able to do this because they have a much better understanding of page structure but, it’s worth manually checking how your site is displaying and editing or clarifying the part of the page being picked up regularly if your search results presence is not as powerful as it could be as a result of this change.

3.  Better page titles

This change may affect both how you title the page and how you go about link building. Google uses a number of signals when deciding how to title a page but, it now ruling out duplicated anchor text as a factor since it found that these can mislead the page title. Google will still use anchor text of links pointing to the page when determining the title but, won’t factor in any that appear to be ‘boiler plate’. To ensure the best title for your page, be aware of varying anchor text when link building, use variations of your keywords in the anchor itself and keep all incoming links as relevant as possible.

4.  Extended Rich Snippets

If you sell an app on your site or have an app available for download, a new, extended rich snippet specifically for apps means you can now include more pertinent information to encourage click throughs and conversions. Rich snippets for apps now include space for fields such as cost and user reviews. Sites with apps available should update their rich snippet information to incorporate this extra data.

5.  Fresher is better

A big change is afoot in the search results for fresh content with Google saying it’s made sweeping changes to how new pages are ranked. The search engine predicts around 35% of search queries will see a difference based on this change, with more recent results appearing more relevant. Taking full advantage of this change for more search visibility is as simple as committing more time and resources to producing fresh, unique and relevant new content.

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For the most part, businesses and website owners get this. They understand the importance of SEO, but don’t really understand the nature of the strategy.  SEO isn’t a quick fix and it won’t result in immediate return.  It’s an online marketing strategy that is build for the long term.  Businesses that have found SEO success and businesses that are still struggling to achieve the ranking that they desire often make the same mistake.  They scale back on their SEO.

Businesses that are positioned well organically in the search engines and generate lots of leads can sometimes think that the work is done and that they can sit back and enjoy the rewards.  In fact, the opposite is true.  When things are going well, that’s the time to really hit it hard and take your SEO to the next level.  Instead of cutting the SEO budget, use that money wisely to enhance the campaign and address areas that might not be as strong as others.  For example, content is a huge part of SEO.  The more content that is produced, the more opportunities there are to get web content ranking in the search engines.  The key is to produce a variety of content.  If you previously had only been writing blog posts and articles, shift some of that budget over to creating videos or whitepapers and other “link bait” materials.  Search engine rankings fluctuate.  Just because you have a prime spot doesn’t mean that you are guaranteed to have that spot forever.  Maintaining a good search engine presence takes just as much time, effort, and resources as it does to establish that good search engine presence in the first place.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are the businesses that are struggling to get their website where they want it to be.  Because they don’t see results as quickly as they’d like to, they are too quick to throw in the towel and lower their SEO budget or eliminate it entirely.  Businesses and website owners need to understand the nature of SEO from the start.  An SEO campaign typically takes six months to a year to really see results.

For businesses of any industry, SEO has the potential to be the lifeblood of an online marketing campaign and be the number one source of sales and leads.  The key is to continue to invest in it over time.  Scaling back on SEO is a shortsighted approach that only allows competitors to sneak up on you, and potentially steal your spot.

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1.  Title Tag

The title tag is not technically a meta tag but it still provides the search engines and search engine users with valuable information.  It is the clickable link on a search engine results page listing and is indexed by the search engines.  Not including this tag (or using the same one on multiple pages) means that Google will use any other text on that page as the title.  Obviously, you don’t want that to happen since it probably won’t be the most accurate representation of the content on that page and won’t look as clean as a nicely written title tag.  It’s important to use your primary keyword or keyword phrase in the title tag, and preferably at the beginning.  Don’t use only the company name for the homepage title tag, especially if the company name doesn’t include any keywords.  The title tag needs to be concise at less than 70 characters (including spaces).

2.  Meta Tag Description

The meta tag description appears below the title on a search engine results page.  Think of it as your sales pitch.  What differentiates your web page from the others that are listed amongst it on the page?  What information can a search engine user expect to find on this page?  Each page should have a unique description, since the content is obviously different on each page.  Use the meta tag description to persuade a potential visitor to click on your page in 150 characters or less.

3.  H1 Tag

H1 tags are the headlines that appear on the actual page of content.  It is the first text that a search engine spider “sees” on the page and therefore should include targeted keywords.  The H1 tag should not be the same as the title tag, which serves a different purpose.  Depending on the amount of content on the page, it may be advisable to also use sub-headers (H2, H3, etc.).  These tags help your SEO and also break up the content which improves the page from a usability perspective.

4.  Image Tag

Remember, the search engine spiders are robots and they can’t see your page.  This means that an image that doesn’t include a tag is passed over and has no significance.  By including an optimized image tag you are telling the spider what the image is about and it provides an opportunity to include one or more relevant keywords.

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