SEO Philosophy – The Long and Short of it (Part 2)

In part one of this series on the long and short of SEO philosophy, we deciphered the mystery behind long tail keywords and LSI. We tried to understand how semantic mark ups alter the way the search engine uses information on your website. In this part of the series, we look at the role of exploding mobile usage and the importance the quality vs quantity when it comes to succeeding with SEO.

We are not even going to refer to this, this or this quote to prove our statement. What we are going to tell you is so obvious that everybody knows it is true. Like we all know the moon is made of cheese!

More and more people are accessing the internet by way of mobile devices. In fact, sometime in 2014 more people accessed the internet via a mobile device than via a desktop computer.

What is even more amazing is that according to latest Internet Trend report published by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, adults access digital media via a mobile device 51% of the time.

By now you have figured out what we are going to say. It is critically important that you optimize your website in a way that accommodates mobile users.

As a matter of fact, Google has been punishing websites that do not provide a decent experience for mobile users. They are now considering rewarding websites that do.

It is the ideal time to optimize your website to profit from Google’s intentions.

Earning Earned Links

Paid media, to put it simply is advertising. There are scores of ways to do this. Facebook allows you to pay for highly customized ads. You can use Google AdWords, promoted tweets, and…, and …, and …, O yes! And don’t forget about … (If you do not know how to fill the blanks, it is study time dear website owner!)

Earned media is when other people refer to you. Generally it is a link to a specific entry to your website, like the ones we have quoted throughout this article. If Google catches you paying for links, they will punish you. Paying for links is a bad idea.  (Listen to what Matt Cutts has to say about it.)

To use an analogy. Someone wants money. He has two options: to earn it or to obtain it illegally. Sooner or later the thief will be caught, and lose everything.

Google realized that using only the quantity of incoming links is not the most accurate way to determine the ranking of a website. They now also use the quality of an incoming link.

To make sure that your site does not get penalized for low quality incoming links, Google provides their disavow tool free of charge. You can also do an Anti-Penalty Link Audit. This service is supplied by LinkAssistant.

Why use these tools? You do not have control over what other people put on their sites. So if Peter’s Prostrated Porn links to you, because Peter happens to like Zombies, Google will penalize you.

The best way to get good links is to have good content. The sites we link to in this article do not even know about us. They do not pay us, and we do not owe them a favor. We link to them because we feel that they provide quality content.

Offline connections for Online links

This approach is sometimes used by bigger entities. For example Orange (the telecoms company) might host a Citrus tree planting day. The publicity this creates will result in citrus tree enthusiasts  linking to the Orange page, thus boosting their rankings.

As a small entity you will have to find a way to do something like this. Perhaps you could have some kind of working arrangement with a group of other authors. Getting your book reviewed on a few sites, or in a digital newspaper, will also help.

It seems that Google is moving in a direction where it will give more and more weight to quality incoming links. It is therefore very important that you figure out a way to earn these.

 

More about what it takes to fine tune a good SEO strategy in part 3!