My clients often tell me, often in “complaint” form, that Google keeps changing things. Generally, I feel that that’s not as true as the blogosphere would have you believe, especially for SEO but also for AdWords. The basics matter, and continue to matter –
- Keywords. Know your keywords, and distinguish among educational, transactional, and winnable keywords. “Riches are in the niches,” in both AdWords and SEO. Knowing your keywords isn’t something that depends on Google – it depends on how your customers search.
- SEO On Page Basics. Once you know your keywords, you need to know where to put them, starting with the all-important TITLE tag and then proceeding into other major tags such as the IMG ALT and the AHREF tag. You need to write keyword-heavy content that’s good for Google, AND good for humans. Once you’ve done this you can Manage Google Ads campaigns automatically from the online platform to view the results of each keyword you have ranked for. This isn’t new, and it hasn’t changed – against despite that you might read on the blogosphere that “keywords don’t matter.”
- SEO Off Page Basics. Links, links, links, links and then reviews (if you’re a local business) on Google. It might even be worth trying a Citation building service to get your business name put into more web content and that can improve your relevancy. (Some changes / see below).
- AdWords. You gotta know your keywords, and you gotta focus on transactional, winnable keywords. Riches are in the niches on AdWords, and you MUST pay attention, measuring your ROI. AdWords work in relation to pay per click marketing, as this allows businesses to create adverts that appear on Google’s search engine. At the end of the day, it’s about the ROI for your company. You will find what method works best for the needs of your business. For instance, Pop up ads are often used as a way of getting ads and clicks, and are often used on adult sites. Finding the best popup network for adults sites could be fixed with a quick search.
So these are the eternals (well, if not eternal, they haven’t changed much). But things DO change, and things ARE changing. So you do have to pay attention and this represents “permanent employment” for someone who bills himself as a San Francisco Bay Area AdWords expert or SEO expert. You gotta pay attention. Here are some things that ARE changing –
- Google Local. I can’t mention Google Local without thinking it’s should be a bad movie title: “Google Local: the Trainwreck Continues.” They’ve nearly disconnected Google Local / Google reviews from Google+ local BUT businesses MUST still manage their listing inside of “Google My Business,” now optimizing their listing both on Google directly and via Google+. It’s a mess – to be honest – and clearly Google hasn’t yet figured out its local strategy. I wish they’d stop focusing on self-driving cars, and start focusing on local search issues. The Yellow Pages died, and all that replaced it is Yelp and Google Local. (Yelp does a much better job than Google, but is less important). To read more about this, go here.
- AdWords. They’re changing to “expanded text ads” and forcing everyone to comply by October, so we now have a pretty major transition in terms of ad content. Guess what? If you don’t “upgrade” your ads, they’re going to be “upgrading” them for you.
Those two changes, alone, are enough to keep me busy. But – don’t miss the forest for the trees. The basics still matter. If, for example, you don’t know your keywords and you don’t see the “riches” in the “niches,” the technical changes in Google Local and in AdWords will not matter much. You can be the most skilled archer at the Olympics, but if you point your bow and arrow in the wrong direction – it doesn’t matter much, does it?
Oh well, back to permanent employment. I just wanted to write a quick blog post on the ever-changing Google and some new changes (and some things that really aren’t changing).
