When I was little, I could spend hours rummaging through the library to find that photo for a school project, that text hidden in a textbook or that story to read. Today, with “I’m Feeling Lucky”, you get all the results in a second.
These results fall into 2 categories: those Google thinks deserve to be there, and those that got there through someone else’s efforts: SEO work. With its constant new updates, the Californian company has beheaded more than one online store that had climbed to the already crowded and coveted first page through keyword spamming and similar tactics.
Among outdated web designs and newly created stores, the big brands everyone was searching for used to appear. Now the first page is fighting itself for the space left between SEM, Maps, Images and mainstream media or Wikipedia. “Houston, we have a problem.” Or not.
These techniques and their abuse have done harm (a lot of it). And it’s clear that NOT everything goes anymore when it comes to ranking at the top.
In a previous post we discussed the importance of corporate blogs and how they can help SEO, and today, in light of the new changes, we stand by the view that Google has become our most demanding user: it wants to find what it’s looking for quickly and easily, with no tricks or keywords that bring visits but don’t reflect what’s actually in the store.
Amid this flood of ranking tactics, forget and steer clear of certain intrusive link building and keyword practices, and make way for exclusive, original, carefully crafted content. Welcome to the new SEO, perhaps harder to climb than the old one, but with more reputation and fewer tricks. Stay away from Black Hat SEO practices and commit to a marketing and communication strategy that covers every communication level (blog, social link building, etc.) to reach your audience, who, in the end, will decide whether it’s worth spending their time and money on your eCommerce store.
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