Page One Rankings – No Longer the Cure to Organic Search

Getting on page one of the Google search engine results has been on every business’ to do list. It could mean a difference between hundreds and thousands of unique hits per day. With the new Google updates, getting page one rankings may not work as well as it used to in order to bring high search traffic to your website. Before, getting on page one meant you could be seen anywhere in the world, and now the former search engine optimization model has been dramatically changed due to two main factors: Localization and personalization. What does this mean for you? In basic terms, if you are not ranking for both national and local search results, you will get lost behind those who are.

Localization: Simply stated this means local search. Google now has the ability to tell where you are physically located when you enter your search term; whether you are in the comfort of your home, at a coffee shop downtown, or in a hotel room in a different city, Google knows. Smart phones and other mobile devices have changed search in dramatic fashions as one half of all local searches are performed on mobile devices. When you type in a search query, Google now provides you the closest local search result based on where you are at that exact moment. If you are business trying to target local search results, and you are not targeting local keywords you could lose your first page rankings once the user searches from their mobile phone, or if they are logged in to Google while doing their search.

Personalization: If the user is logged into Google, the SERPs (search engine results page) will provide them with results based on their personalized activity. This includes past browser history, bookmarked pages and social media activities. So if the user follows you on Facebook or Google+, you will show up as an authority in their search results, even if your current page rankings are far off of first page standards. This is why having different active social media platforms is vital to current SEO strategies. This is how you can tell when you are seeing a personalized search. See the icons on the left hand side? This is because I am currently logged into Google and because I follow Cook Wheelwright Group on Google+ and Facebook.

This is not to say that page one rankings will not make an impact on your business as we have seen what the difference page one can have on an inbound marketing campaign. What we are saying is that as SEO strategists we have to start thinking differently, putting focus on both national and local search results and making sure our clients are using all the options available.

If you are concerned about loosing your page one rankings, or you want to learn how you can succeed with local and national search results, give us a call at 480.779.8001 or email us at Info@CookWheelwright.com and we would be happy to give you a complementary evaluation!

Is SEO Really Dying?

Recently Forbes published an article titled “The Death of SEO: The Rise of Social, PR, and Real Content” quoting Adam Torkildson, one of the top SEO consultants in Utah and one of the best in the country stating that Search Engine Optimization as we know it will be dead in two years.

This theory has been slowly coming to fruition after the Panda update first, and then the most recent Penguin update. Basically what happened is that Google was not providing results that the users wanted. The search engines were in fact being manipulated by “black hat” digital marketing techniques allowing those with the largest pocketbook, and most back links, to be pushed to the top of the search rankings, rather than those with the most valuable information.

Of course, every small business owner believes their product is the best and should be on page one, but there are over 800 billion websites out in the world wide web right now, therefore serving up what the USER is looking for has become more and more difficult. Thus, Google decided it was time to put the “smack down” so to speak on those who were manipulating the algorithms, violating the Google terms and conditions.

Lets start with a little background on the Google Penguin update…Penguin was officially announced on May 26, 3012 and Google described the Penguin update as an algorithm change that’s aimed at webspam and, more specifically, “sites that we believe are violating Google’s quality guidelines.” With this Google penalized any and all sites that they felt violated those terms, as well as others which proved to be “false positives” leaving many small businesses scared and unsure of what to do next.

The Search Engine Journal published an article back in June stating:

“Penguin places more of an emphasis on the reputation and quality of a site that’s linking to your specific domain rather than the sheer number of links that point in your direction. Basically, this means that SEO technicians won’t be rewarded anymore for taking shortcuts when it comes to link building. Those $10/mth for 2000 back link offers are now not only pointless, but they’re also quite dangerous.”

So with all these changes, is SEO in fact dead? Our opinion at Cook Wheelwright Group is that SEO is dead in its current form, however is being reborn through quality content and proper social media management. This is a theory we have believed in for over a year now, even before the Penguin update.

We still believe that both on page and off page SEO are important, it just needs to be done in a tasteful way that compliments the algorithm rather than attempting to manipulate it with paid backlinks. So, again, how does a small business compete with those who can afford to have a full-time staff writing quality content, consistently updating social media posts, commenting on other blog posts and keeping up with all the different review sites for reputation management? Again we refer back to our blog regarding Sabermetrics:

By using statistical data available to us, and focusing on the marketing version of moving runners around the bases (customer behavior patterns on the website) we can effectively determine the best methods for progressing the sale. Analytics tools allow us to not only track, but predict customer behavior online which helps us to revise and model websites based off the data. Bounce rates, keywords, and onsite navigation patterns all factor in to delivering the best marketing experience. All of this data can be leveraged to improve the ultimate measurement of your marketing, the ROI.

In blogs to come we will expand on the importance of social media and quality content to replace the previous form of SEO. We will teach you what we look for when doing a digital marketing audit as well as a few tips and tricks that you can do to help your online marketing campaigns.

Of course you can always reach out and ask questions or schedule a complimentary review with one of our strategic marketing specialists. Follow this link to our website or call us anytime at 480-779-8001!