For nearly a decade Google has ruled the internet. In fact, for at least the past 6 years, Google’s traffic has been more than triple its closest competitor, Yahoo. Google’s popularity, coupled with the introduction of Adwords, Google’s advertising platform, has made them the holy grail of search engine optimizers and marketers. Search engine optimization (SEO) came into its own as a viable business service because of Google. The very same SEO process can be viewed on Social Firestarter homepage, which is helping lawyers understand how they can get more clients. All of the sudden you could pay someone to optimize your website and climb to the top of the search results page. However, with the many legitimate search marketers there were those that were willing to help website owners trick Google into ranking them higher than was warranted.
The term “black hat” SEO refers to techniques that are used on your website in order to trick Google’s algorithm into ranking your site higher for a given search term. However, Google’s algorithm has steadily become more sophisticated which makes these practices less fruitful. Furthermore, Google will not hesitate to ban your site completely if you engage in practices it determines are “black hat”. Being left out of the largest search engine in the world is enough of a deterrent for most website owners.
Last week, New York Times reported that J.C. Penney had been caught by Google employing a “black hat” SEO tactic. According to the article, J.C. Penney was trying to improve their rankings for search terms like; “skinny jeans,” “home decor,” “comforter sets,” “furniture” and several others. For months jcpenney.com was ranking number one on Google for those highly competitive search terms. Specifically, the method they used was to add links to hundreds of other sites leading back to their site. By adding these thousands (2,015 to be exact) of links (essentially also called Niche Edits), they tricked Google into thinking jcpenney.com was more relevant for these terms than was the case. Once it was discovered, they worked with Google to correct the problem. Google did not release any specifics about what they called “corrective action”, but jcpenney.com went from number one for most of these terms to number 60 or 70, or worse. It was not an all-out ban, but a pretty damaging blow to their online marketing efforts nonetheless. A J.C. Penney spokesperson claimed they had no idea who did this, but they quickly fired their search marketing firm.
So how do you stay on Google’s good side while optimizing your website for the best possible rankings? While their search ranking algorithm is a closely guarded secret, like Colonel Sanders’ recipe, there are things you can do that Google openly endorses.
Quality Linking: One of the most influential factors in ranking well are the links inbound to your website. However, quality is the key. If you’re selling furniture and you have a link from a financial services website, Google will not give that any weight. However, if you have a link from one of the major furniture association, Google will interpret that as an endorsement of sorts and give it more weight. Links structure is also important. For example, if the link says “Click here for furniture” it will carry a lower quality score than if the link says ‘Quality Outdoor Furniture”. I could spend countless blog postings discussing the value of links and how to properly use them. However, my goal here is to just make you aware of it. It’s important to talk to the person in charge of your website (even if it’s a marketing agency) and ask them about your linking strategy.
Quality Content: When search engines were in their infancy you only needed to pack your website full of the keywords you wished to rank for and that was it. That was because rudimentary search engines only looked at content and determined value and rank by the quantity of relevant content. This is no longer the case. Your website needs quality content that’s original and updated regularly. In fact, it’s widely believed that Google gives more credibility to sites that are updated on a regular basis.
Quality content comes in many forms. The most common form is the descriptions and blurbs that live right on your main web pages. These need to be well thought out, written statements because that is the first thing the search engines see when they visit your site. Another form of content is the type that is updated frequently, like blogs, articles, and even status updates. Blogs are great opportunities to post fresh, quality content about your business or industry. Search engines love blogs. Having a repository for any articles you have written is great too. Similar to a blog, an article repository establishes your company as experts in your industry and certainly contributes positively to your online reputation. Lastly, social networking status updates are important too. If your company is on Facebook or Twitter, it’s a good idea and a growing trend to have your updates fed directly on your website. It’s fresh, regularly updated content, and contributes to your social networking efforts.
Those are two of the main contributing factors to your website’s search engine ranking. There are undoubtedly dozens or even hundreds of other factors that go into Google’s algorithm, but if you have a solid foundation of quality content and good inbound links, you have taken a giant leap in the ultimate goal of ranking well. J.C Penney, or perhaps their agency, tried to take a shortcut. There really are no legitimate shortcuts in the SEO world. You can’t pay someone to rank you high overnight, or even in a month or two, despite the countless solicitations you may receive with contradictory claims.
