Does SEO Still Work In 2014? The Truth About SEO‌ If you have been following Google and SEO for the past few years, you know that Google is taking a stand against spam and is constantly changing their algorithm (http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change) to prevent spammers from ranking websites in their index. Google wants to ensure that their users get the best possible search results, which is why they are the number one search engine in the world! Because of them, many people are starting to ask the question "Does SEO still work?� Below I will go over the truth about SEO that you must learn to accept if you want to enjoy the benefits of free traffic from the search engines. SEO Does Work! Yes, SEO does work, but the days of being able to throw out terrible content and point spam filled backlinks to your website are long gone. You can no longer create tiny little five page websites and, spin an article, and submit to thousands of low quality article directories and expect your site to rank. The key to ranking in the search engines these days is to have great content on your website that engages the reader, have natural backlinking (or at least appear to have that), and a large, authority style website. You also need to make sure fresh content is being added to your website on a regular basis. Content Will Always Be King We have all heard that content is king, but ever since the Panda and Penguin updates by Google, this is more true than ever! Remember you need to work with Google, not against Google when trying to rank your website, and Google is looking for content that the readers will enjoy, so make sure the content on your website is content that is valuable and provides the correct information to the reader. All the backlink building in the world won't do anything if your site is not optimized well with great content.
One thing people tend to struggle with is actually building high quality and informative content. The best way to do this is to simply have a personality. You aren't writing for a grade, your old writing and grammar teacher isn't going to be judging your articles. You want to write with your personality, in other words write in the same way that you would talk. This will make the content more engaging for the audience and they will get to know the true you which will make them want to keep coming back to your website. Make sure your opinions are strong even if it is controversial, sometimes controversial content is the best type of content. Google will always be changing their algorithm, but if there is one thing you can count on it's the fact that if you have high quality content on your website, you will never have to worry about an algorithm change ever again. What About Backlinks? Yes, backlinks are still important to rank you site in Google, but you don't want to stick with the typical low quality backlinks that many people still do. These used to work wonders but now they can do more harm than good. When it comes to backlinks you want to post on relevant sites. For example, if I have a site on weight loss, I want to post on other sites that are about health and fitness. Also, make sure the site is an authority site that Google already trusts, the higher the sites Page Rank and authority the better. Anchor Text Ratios When it comes to anchor text, make sure you diversify it. You don't want all your anchor texts to say the same thing, this wouldn't look natural. Make sure less than 30% of them are what you are actually trying to rank for, the rest can be anything else including general terms such as "click here".
SEO will always be important, it is still the best traffic source and it always will be. If you aren't ranking in the Google Search Engine you are losing out on a ton of quality traffic. Just remember to only post high quality content and get high quality backlinks. If you do this your website will continue to rank well through all the major algorithm changes. If you are the type of business owner who would rather focus your time on your business rather than the SEO of your website, I recommend checking out this article on how to find a good SEO company: http://emagicseo.co.nz/seo-company/how-to-choose-the-best-seo-company/