Timeless Search Engine Optimization

Penguin, Panda, Mobilegeddon, Pirate, Hummingbird, and my personal favorite… Boston. Every single Google search engine algorithm tweak is big news in the marketing world. Folks constantly try to game the system, crack the code, and adjust their strategy.  How can we get ahead of Google and the other platforms?

When I first got involved in search engine optimization in the previous century, it really was a game. There were a dozen viable search engines that indexed every month or so, each with widely different criteria for what worked. From that mess emerged the dominating Google search engine. Instead of trying to push a million things at you on the home page, Google had a laser focus on great search results. It wasn’t flashy and didn’t have any of the bells and whistles the other search engines had, but Google had something they didn’t. Speed, simplicity, and the most relevant search results.

With its dominance, web developers are constantly chasing Google’s latest upgrade. But maybe we shouldn’t be chasing Google.

Wayne Gretzky was one of the greatest hockey players of all time. Watching him was amazing. He always seemed to come up with the puck. Once he was asked how he was able to be where the puck was all the time. He answered, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

So maybe we should be trying to get ahead of Google. After all, what is Google really trying to do? When you search for a plumber, do you think Google wants you to find the plumber with the best marketing team, or the best plumber? The answer is, of course, the best plumber. We all have the best friend who we ask about kitchen wares, or tools, or tech gadgets, but Google wants to be as helpful as all those friends combined. You see, each upgrade to Google brings Google that much closer to being that person you would ask for advice. All this time that we’ve been chasing Google, Google has actually been chasing us!

Think about one of the latest releases Google made in April of 2015. It was known as Mobilegeddon. All of the sudden, Google was going to make it harder to find your site on a mobile device if your site would not work well on a mobile device. Why? Just to be mean? Of course not. Google just wants to give a great experience customized to the type of user, just like that advice your friend would give you.

It’s all about content. It will always be about content and trust. That’s what your expert friends and family have, right? The value of content is a strategy well understood by such internet tycoons as William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemmingway, or J.K. Rowling. None wrote for the web, but they have an extremely strong presence on it.

So… forget chasing Google, and start chasing people again. If you miss a thing or two because you are too user-friendly for the Google bot to notice, don’t worry… Google will eventually catch up to you.