Alternative Marketing Connections

The biggest story "buzzing" around the internet (pun intended) this week has been the effects, both positive and negative, of Google's latest "Panda" update to their search indexing algorithms.  Google's primary intent was to deemphasize the importance of "low quality" and "shallow" content created by content farms.

While some websites are seeing benefits from this update, others -- even some with decent quality content -- are seeing a drop in their Google rankings.

However, regardless of your knowledge level of search engine optimization (SEO), internet saavy, or even your personal views of Google, I believe you should take a "bigger picture" approach to search engine rankings.

As a web developer primarily working with small businesses on tight budgets, I always teach my clients the same principles:

1. Build your site in a content management system (CMS) such as Wordpress, Joomla, or any variety of proprietary solutions, and keep it updated.  It keeps you site layout consistent and professional, and also makes it easy to keep you site search engine friendly.
    
2. Have a blog and/or news section in your site; update it with new articles at least a few times a month.  Google will always prefer fresh content.
    
3. Keep your content relevant to your business.  The more specialized your core content and message, the more Google will value the quality of your website.  That doesn't mean you can't post about other things, but it does mean that your key message(s) should be consistent overall.
    
4. Understand the basic, logical rules of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine friendly (SEF) pages.  Do not let these concepts scare you: non-technical people can learn this in a hour or two.  I know because I teach my own clients these concepts, and even those with technophobia tell me it's actually pretty easy.
    
5. Actively participate in the social media and create backlinks to your website updates.  Just a few minutes a day on Facebook on a consistent basic can do wonders for your business' exposure.
    
6. Participate in relevant forums on related websites.  Find a few sites that discuss areas of interest to you that are related to your business, read a couple articles a day, and leave comments if you have an opinion.  

Google will always continue to update their algorithms to penalize those who try to cheat the system, and people will always be looking for new ways to cheat. But anyone who follows the 6 core principles I've listed above will consistently get decent organic results in the search engines over the long haul.

Russ Alman
Visionary in Chief
Alternative Marketing Connections