D4 Trendspotter: The Latest in SEO

The SEO experts at D4 constantly have their finger on the ever-changing SEO pulse. Search Engine Optimization has really become a staple in any marketing plan in this day and age. It involves adding content to your website, managing your social channels, analyzing data and optimizing for the best key word saturation and usage. We manage these elements and more for many of our clients, constantly increasing their website traffic and targeting the right audience. Our focus is on organic SEO. Organic SEO is when you use real content and know-how to climb in the search rankings for specific keywords, and rank on the first page. When you search for something, you generally see your results in Google or another search engine and you see advertisements, then local results with a map, then organic search results. When you see this page, what do you do? Most people scroll right down to the organic content, or look at the local listings if they are relevant. Local listings would be relevant, for example, if you are trying to find somewhere to eat or a hair dresser near you. It would not be as relevant if you are looking for a grocery delivery service (like Hello Fresh or Blue Apron) or are shopping for something online, for example. We take all of this into consideration and focus our efforts on a mix of location results and organic results, to get you the most relevant customers. Sound complicated? Well we have it down to a science, but the science continues to change. Google updates their algorithm about 600 times a year, and all of the other search engines follow suit. They change what is the most important, what gives you the best results, and in general, how their little crawlers read your content. So how do we stay on top of this ever changing world? By predicting trends accurately based on patterns we see on a daily basis. The most recent shift has lead to some changes in our SEO implementation and a shift in our focus. Although we do practice these elements on a regular basis, the amount of focus we have put on different elements has shifted. Here are some ways that we have changed our  focus.

Change #1: Longer Content

This is probably the most significant change to our SEO strategies. Gone are the days when we can post a 300-400 word blog and see great results. Our content writers are in overdrive, striving for content that is between 750 and 1,500 words. This kind of content has much more value in the eyes of search engines and in the eyes of people looking for this content. We want to make sure  we are being the most efficient with our time and your budget, so if an 800 word article is going to get your company more exposure than two 400 word articles, that is where we are going to spend our time.

Change #2: Less Intra-Website Links

To make keywords stand out, we have used “intra-website linking” in the past. This means that we would link keywords to other pages on the website. For example, if the keyword is “web design,” we would link those words to a page about web design services multiple times throughout the article. Now, we are scaling back the number of links and opting for cleaner content. Our thought process here is that having the right saturation of keywords matters more than making those keywords stand out to a crawling bot. We are opting for more humanized content.

Change #3: Focus on More Credible Back-links

Creating credible back links to websites has always been a piece of our SEO puzzle, but now we will be putting more emphasis on this strategy. Seeking out related content, becoming an authority on other websites and linking back to our client’s website, and making sure we are driving the right kind of traffic to our client’s website from other sources. This is a delicate balance that needs to be executed properly, or it can actually have a negative impact on your website’s rank. Overall, the trends lean more towards human content and less towards SEO tricks. We write content for people first, search engines second. This is because Google’s algorithm is working towards this same goal. They don’t want to be able to be tricked, they want to give you the most relevant content, fast. They want to make things easy as possible for you and ensure you find what you are searching for when you need it. Now, the best part of all of this is, you don’t have to worry about it! We are hands-on everyday in the SEO world, elbow deep in analytics, data and trends. So leave the heavy lifting to us, we can manage your SEO efforts expertly, giving you the best return on investment possible. Don’t practice Search Engine Optimization yet? Let’s talk. Potential customers need to be able to find you online, where they are searching, when they are searching for you. Let’s talk about the details and what a partnership with us entails when it comes to SEO.