SEO Isn’t As Important As It Used To Be
Social media plays a big role in this situation. People are now used to getting recommendations through Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter etc. Many people have now also become experienced in using the web and can cut through search results to get the best content, regardless of all the best keywords you have put in.
Search engines are also becoming clever, so they send traffic to the sites with best content.
keep reading to know why search engine optimization is less important now, what is the alternative/solution, and even when it still is important.
1. Facebook
Now many people don’t even use google to find good content, what they do instead is ask their friends and groups on Facebook for recommendations.These recommendations are also trusted by people, as their friends are the source of it, rather than some pattern of a search engine. And according to the new research, Facebook boasts more than 500 Million active users, so you can get the idea how important Facebook has become for people.
What You Should Do
Facebook can bring in a lot of traffic to your site and you should definitely use it as a medium of this kind. The first thing you should do is placing a “Like” button on your site, so visitors can share it with their friends if they wish. Secondly, make a page or group of your company or website and get people to join it. Thirdly, you can also advertise on Facebook if you want.
But please stay away from spamming using Facebook!
2. Social Bookmarking or Social Networking
Many people also use social bookmarking and news sites. These sites are now becoming an important source of getting information of your choice and interest.
People with very defined interests and an account on social bookmarking and news sites usually head over to these sites when they want to find some information. Tagging and inbuilt search function has enabled users to find almost anything. The fact that other people have already liked the content and saved it for later, makes the content even more trustworthy and good.
What You Should Do
Simply add social bookmarking links to your website. This would let people save (and promote) your pages. You should also set up accounts on the major social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, Delicious, StumbleUpon, and any other sites that are specific to your niche. But remember to share and promote good and relevant content from your website as well as elsewhere; otherwise you will look like a spam account.
3. Better Search Engine Tactics
Search engines are getting smarter day by day. So this means that the SEO strategies that worked awesomely some months ago, aren’t going to work as awesomely now.
The more smart the search engines, the less effective the on-site SEO tactics. But search engines would obviously recognize good content so you should not expect much traffic without good content. When it comes to off-site strategies, they do work but search engines are aware of some of the strategies that are used to make sites look more popular.
What You Should Do
Well this one is quite obvious: have good, relevant and quality content on your website. Stop focusing on keywords, just focus on the quality. Provide the content that will be useful for your visitors. Search engines would pick the best content that is out there — so make sure it your your content.
4. Blog Roundups
Blogs for every niche are present. These blogs usually post roundups of content from different sources online. These roundups are a great way of finding content related to a specific topic without wasting your time in going through search results.
Again, people like these kinds of posts is because of the feeling that someone has already liked this content and thought it worthy of being shared.
What You Should Do
You can do two thing. First, if you have a blog, you can do a roundup with resources from your own site and other sites. Roundups mostly get bookmarked and shared even months after they have been made.
Second, make content that can be included in these types of posts. Then contact bloggers that write about your topic and make sure they know your site. Being featured in roundups can bring in a lot of traffic to your site for months.
5. Twitter
People usually find it easier to ask their followers for recommendations for content regarding some topic than searching for it. The reason is that you get much better and already-liked-by-a-human results. People usually have more Twitter followers than they have friends on other social networking sites, so they get information quite quickly and easily.
Twitter is used for everything — from breaking news to research. Trending topics tell us the latest trends around the world and hashtags let us focus on specific topics.
What You Should Do
Businesses with Twitter accounts can interact with their customers and get to know about the latest happenings in their industry. You should also follow relevant hashtags and answer questions of users. Your followers will get the information you tweet to them and if they find that information useful, they will surely promote it by retweeting it.
6. People Already Have Particular Favorite Sites
Because internet has become an important part of people’s life, they usually know which sites to head to for certain things. For instance, if people want to get a book, they will directly go to Amazon instead of using the search engine.
What You Should Do
Find all the big sites in your niche and try to get your content featured on them. You can always put ads on them to bring people in to your website. You can also try being an associate of these big sites. For example, if you sell something you can try becoming an Amazon Associate to sell via their website.
7. Searchers Are More Experienced Now
Internet users are more experienced searchers now. They know exactly what to write to get best results. Searchers mostly use very specific search terms and still get thousands of relevant results. This makes SEO even more tough to do as you never know what people are going to type in to find something.
What You Should Do
Again, this one boils down to good quality and relevant content. Stop trying to fool the search engines and simply try to provide the best content on your website. Search engine traffic is getting smaller and even a part of that small traffic goes to big sites. as they have more incoming links and referrals. But still you should pay attention to what people search for to get to your site. And if some tern gets you more traffic than the other, you should definitely make more content around it.
8. Newsletters, Newsgroups and Mailing Lists
Newsletters and mailing lists have always been a very famos methods to bring in more traffic to your site. But this might not make subscribers come to your site. Newsgroups such as Yahoo Groups, Google Groups and About forums can also bring in traffic — but only if you know how to use them to get the most out of them.
What You Should Do
Newsletters and mailing lists can be used to remind your subscribers that your site exists. If they like your content, they can also forward your mail and in return you will get more exposure and obviously, visitors. You can get the most out of Yahoo Groups, Google Groups and About forums etc by getting involved in the discussions there. Don’t spam or post ads there, as it will annoy other users and destroy your reputation. Once you are involved your website will get more traffic — through the URL to your site in your signature.
Times When SEO Still Matters
All what has been said above is not to indicate that search engines have become totally useless. Many industries and niches can get a lot of new traffic from search engines.
SEO can prove to be very beneficial for informational websites. Well this again comes down to quality of content, the better the content the more traffic they get from search engines and the better placement too. Other optimizations like alt tags on images etc can help ameliorate your placement even more.
People, obviously, still use search engines for finding content.
One more type of sites that can benefit a lot from SEO are those which provide information on things people won’t be comfortable discussing with others. If people can’t discuss some topic with their friends on Facebook or Twitter, they will surely head to search engines!
Conclusion
You can bring in a large amount traffic to your website only if you know what techniques to use. Keep in mind that not every technique works for every wensite, so choose your stategies and tactics wisely and then watch the traffic increase.
But one thing is clear, your site is of no worth unless you get traffic. What is the use of a website when no one can find you?
