When I think of SEO and the practice of optimizing websites, I am reminded of the Beatles song, “Long and Winding Road.” …yes, I know it sounds corny, but bear with me. Unfortunately, it’s just one of those songs that remains stuck inside your head.
As I was thinking about this lyric while sitting down to pen this article, I was reminded of the webmaster’s SEO journey and how it has evolved over the years. I can’t help but think of where SEO has gone and how fast things have changed in the course of only a year.
To me, what has changed the most is the speed at which webmasters achieve success when optimizing their sites in this new SEO paradigm…or the speed at which webmasters will acquire organic rankings.
Why is it a long and winding road?
Years ago, every tactic webmasters used (pre Panda and Penguin) added QUICK SEO benefit to sites…
- With an exact match domain, webmasters could rise to the top of a targeted niche with a few links and a prayer…
- With blog networks, webmasters could snag hundreds of blog links with only one article submission, a spinner and some low-quality sites…
- With a paid PR6 link from any non-related site, webmasters would receive successful boosts in the search engines regardless of the relevance and authority of the linking site…
- With a well-endowed widget, webmasters could embed their site and wait for it to go viral, picking up thousands of links along the way…
- With “optimized” web pages, webmasters could create hundreds of mini-sites, and link them back to their main site until their SEO strategy looked like a bicycle wheel gone bad…
Where will these tactics get you now?
Nowhere…at least not for the long term. Those quick trick benefits no longer work and some will land you in Google purgatory.
To be blunt, SEO has NEVER really changed, nor will it. The rules are the same; the enforcer is simply now doing its job.
Yes, we can argue that Google, without permission, takes our sites and publishes them in its index, for Google is not actually the web, even though we think of it as such. But, the truth is, Google owns the market share, and millions of sites rely on its popularity to market their businesses.
Without quick and easy ways to rank, SEO has in fact become a Long and Winding Road. Yes, I know it is a little corny to compare SEO to a Beatles song, but the fact remains—regardless of your site, whether ecommerce, blog or niche-focused, ranking in an industry will require becoming a relevant, engaging, value-giving authority.
This doesn’t mean the little sites won’t rank or succeed. As long as they provide value, they are still valuable.
Does this mean you have to compete with the “big guys?” Quite the contrary. There is plenty of room for the small biz guys.
You may think Travelocity and Expedia dominate the entire travel space…but this is not entirely true.
There are plenty of niche travel markets ripe for the picking. The difference is…it will take a lot longer to rank in each market because the tactics that once brought quick results no longer work.
So why not dominate these niche markets by building smaller authority-like, relevant sites?
Instead of simply creating websites in a niche, think about dominating a niche, and becoming an authority. If you focus on a smaller subset of a larger industry, the long and winding road won’t be as long, but it also won’t happen overnight. You don’t have to be Amazon, but you DO have to show Google you want to play by the rules.
SEO has Become Easier for Some
If you ask brands that have been doing it the “right way” for years, SEO has become easier. These webmasters already expected optimization to be a long and winding road because they understood that exposure had more to do with marketing than quick Google rankings. For these brands, SEO is better than ever, and they experienced increased rankings as result because many of the low-quality sites in their niche have been downgraded.
The Verdict?
Whether you had to start over, re-strategize or you are simply loathing in the spoils of those who have suffered, SEO is no longer a quick fix. If you are prepared to face the long and winding road, or at least some version of it, let me just say, welcome to life…all good things usually require a good deal of effort, but the results are always worth it.
Image Credit: DanTheGuitarMan15