INVESTING IN SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

As businesses, we understand we need an online brand presence.  However, unlike those boxes of print folders carefully designed for a long shelf life, online brand is only effective if it's current and searchable.  Which brings us to cost.  The investment in search engine optimization is considerable; it's resource- heavy in terms of time and knowledge capital and, somewhat, in terms of cost. But even as we continue to pepper our speech with talk of the SEO algorithm, thinking we know what to do to maintain currency and search-ability, the rules for search engine optimization are changing.

In the quest for greater precision, Google has been launching improvements. A while back we wrote about the Hummingbird algorithm, and even before its launch,  Panda and Penguin had joined Google's bag of search tricks. In 2011, Panda launched and  its 2014 update continues to keep quality content high on searches and favors small business growth.  Penguin launched in 2012, and is also in update mode, continuing to fight spam by searching for and lowering ranking of sites buying links.  Hummingbird is the current state-of-the-art precise, fast algorithm and is described as enabling a conversational search. It came about because we routinely search by asking a question. And on top of that, we search most often on hand- held devices rather than our pcs. And, we are  more likely to 'talk' our searches. [much faster to just ask out loud] ergo, searching conversationally.

Essentially, search engines are getting better and better at sifting through the chafe to find what you want.  So, quality content is the single most important  investment to develop brand presence online.  Although linking and keywords are still important elements in searches, providing exceptional, current content is the best thing you can do.  Hmmm... providing valuable, relevant, quality information is something we all understand--Google is just reminding us.