SEO is the science of giving your audience a better web experience.
Google wants to make the web experience better for their users. So should you. Google’s stated goal is to reward businesses that have the most engaging and compelling web site content, press, visual media, blog, and social media affinity. In the world of Google Plus and Google’s vast growing user integration with Gmail, Documents, and the popular social media sites that rate experiences, they are gathering far more intelligence about the likes and dislikes of users. These signals were not available to Google before the rise of social media and now they are available in great abundance. As Google’s goal is to evolve and continue to improve the overall web experience, their ability to gauge the usability, engaging qualities of web sites, and the usefulness of links and content is unprecedented. Moreover, Google will continue to propagate its social network (Google Plus) and other products layered into its search user base so the ability of the ranking algorithm to gauge quality, as defined by Google, will continue to measure more and more factors. Even the definition of “quality” will evolve with an ever broadening criteria that can be gleaned from massive waves of data that create new measurables that could not be achieved prior to the social web and Google’s integrated products. As every day passes, useful content and useless content can be differentiated with an algorithm that in 2011 saw over 200 changes. The reality is clear – White Hat SEO that focuses on quality content, engaging marketing, user response analysis, and meaningful social integration will win the race.
Although change has been rampant, it is still true that the more things change the more they stay the same. In the end, we understand the philosophy of Google by not only its stated goals but by the history of earthshattering ranking updates that have almost always been about fighting web spam and/or rewarding/penalizing sites based on quality signals. Now Google’s user data harvest is at an all-time high and it’s likely to grow exponentially. More so than ever before, a focus on the quid pro quo arrangement with Google is the same – build great quality content that is technically sound, usable, and ideally viral, then the links and rankings will come naturally. So, the axiom Google has been promoting for years now – give great content to get good natural rankings – is becoming truer as every day passes.
For many years, nefarious link building tactics were successful in acquiring rankings. The days of getting rankings using “black hat” tactics are nearly over if not completely over. Black hat SEO’s will certainly try to game the rankings in the post Penguin era, but their success in the social media world will be far more limited if not impossible.
White Hat SEO focuses on improved usability, user engagement, great content, and creative ways to make a site more compelling. White Hatters also understand the need to create quality press, engaging articles, and visual pieces to gain traction in your target audience while creating natural link magnetism.
Thank you for visiting White Hatter SEO. We know how to help you give Google the goods so you can get the goods from Google. We live, eat, and breathe it. We would like to provide your team with an expert consultation and/or evaluation of your web campaign. You won’t speak to a sales rep if you call us, so be prepared for what is sometimes a refreshingly straight forward, expert evaluation. We love talking SEO so please make our day by giving us a call and we’ll try to return the favor.