Search Engine optimization is best known for the the development of key wording, prepping the website to be optimized for crawling and by producing consistent content inline with the current trends.
However, Google’s Artificial Intelligence algorithms and social media have completely changed the ball game over the last few years.
More so then ever, websites are served up to people based on what you say and do when you are not on the computer.
Your Android phone listens to you, locates you, goes through your emails and much more, tailoring your search results specifically for you based upon what you are interested in or what it wants you to be interested in.
Therefore, SEO is almost completely out of the control of the developer and is largely focused on the “Google – Agenda”.
However we know that there are certain things that Google likes. If you are a popular and prominent voice on social media or you simply fit into the algorithm’s framework as to what it considers an acceptable profile for business, then your website and it’s products will produce higher ranking results.
Google views your website in a similar way and ties it into the personal profiles and overall political agendas of the team that works for your company.
Therefore there are things that you can do to influence your search engine rankings.
(a) Try to avoid controversial statements on social media when representing yourself or your company
(b) Advertise a lot with Google and make use of the most common trends on social media. Social Media Advertisement is also of high importance and a budget with a Social Media Manager or Team that manages your client base will increase your position on search rankings.
(c) Keep your website, clean, fast loading, easy to navigate, try to reduce dead links, repetitive content and other factors.
(d) Use Google Tools as much as possible. The more that your website is integrated into Google Services the more frequently you will be noticed by the Google Algorithm
(e)Get people talking and writing about your company as much as possible, but try get those people to keep the content that they are writing clean. If content is seen as harmful as per the google algorithm your website will drop rankings.
Therefore search engine optimization is holistic. When someone offers you an SEO package for 100 Euro and states that they will raise your rankings, this is usually a lie or just complete ignorance.
Search engine optimization is an ongoing and living process that must be done every single day for the lifespan of your project, company or website.
Real SEO is actually more akin to your product / business or reputation online. The rule of thumb is that the more people that are talking about you online, the better your rankings will be and the more frequently you will be referenced unless it goes against the Google Algorithms Agenda.
There is a lot more to SEO then this that the developers do have control of. For example, making sure that you have ping-backs set up, consistently updated XML site maps, your website is not found on link farm sites, pyramid scheme website or not referencing websites that are low ranked on Google like Bitcoin schemes etc… These all play into your overall rankings. There are many other things to consider such as not hiding content behind dynamic animations and avoiding the use of Iframes for content displays etc.. But you can read more about that here
Your website’s security is also an issue. Having an up to date privacy policy and several other factors are all integrated into the algorithm.
Unique & engaging content is also of high importance. Therefore you need a writer that can hold people on the page. The longer someone spends on your page the higher the rankings. This content needs to be clean and inline with the latest Google Trends, however if your article has nothing to do with a trend and you inject the wrong hashtag, then your ranking will be reduced. That is why getting an SEO expert to produce your content is of the highest importance
The point is that you need a specialist to assist you to do it properly and it is probably not as cheap as you think