make your content engaging and succinct
Google’s Corporate Mission Statement
Google’s corporate mission statement from the very beginning back in 1995: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” What does that mean exactly? It means just as it states; that they’ve prioritized two things: 1) accessibility 2) and usefulness. And you know what? That applies to even today. In fact, I believe if you memorize Googles mission statement, and you understand it, you will quickly start to make very fast connections in your brain on how SEO works. Why is this? Googles original and still current mission statement is a key constant. This mission statement has stayed the same since day 01 of the company. Though the mission statement itself is the key constant, every action, update whether big or small, has always seemed to stem and even spin off of the very axis of this mission statement. The many analogs that have been marked in the course in time since day 01 illustrates this very point.
I stand tall, and I stand firm that if you brand this mission statement in your mind when you market your strategies, you will be far better off SEO-wise, than any other tactic or strategy you can get from any text book, period. It alone has been the single biggest factor for me in helping me in all of my years in Digital Marketing.
Even today, it is the single first thing I always think about when I make or CRO any clients page. I do this at work, and in my private SEO consulting projects. Moving along to next steps, at the heart of SEO, are two things: 1) Relevance 2) Trustworthiness. In SEO for 2020, if you want to rank, you need to provision your digital presence (meaning everything digital that you manage in your realm of digital properties) with very quality and succinct content. That content also needs to be engaging. It needs to provide value to the user the second they land on your page. The quality of your code and page load-times are now a ranking factor, too! Everything from canonicalization, page titles and meta descriptions, JSON-LD, async and defer attributes for your scripts, robots.txt and sitemap files. SEO used to be stupid easy. That is no longer the story here. SEO used to be an occupation in the IT industry seen as a myth or laughable pursuit. Those days are long gone! SEO is a noble and highly respected pursuit nowadays because it is changing so fast, and is so complex that only the most creative and dedicated survive.
SEO used to be easy
Google is getting more and more savvy to people and companies who “game the system” trying to get ranked higher in SERP’s. Gaming the system doesn’t truly help the customer. Things have changed! Google therefore has changed a lot. “Change is what creates opportunity” -Rand Fishkin
You must work to be customer-centric! Staying up-to-date with the requirements that Google is holding your content and brand(s) to, changes all the time so to provide the best possible experience and opportunities for the customer.
In today’s digital-ecosystem, one must continue to keep their ears on the tracks for what’s important and what matters. You’ve got to read, listen, watch, learn, and do everything you can to stay informed and up-to-date with what is going on in the realm of SEO. Rand Fishkin is one of the many resources that I incessantly keep in tuned with to better my craft.
Mobile, Tablet, and Desktop viewports
Mobile is becoming more and more important, literally every single day. Take for instance, mobile-search. Did you know that mobile search has now taken over desktop search by a large margin? Yes! It’s true!
So not only is it VERY important to build for the Tablet and Mobile viewports for just aesthetic purposes, but now we need to ensure that the answers, services, products or whatever the customer is looking for, are provided succinctly, quickly, and in a highly optimized fashion on the back-end to ensure that we score high with page speed/performance tests that Google now holds EVERYONE responsible for, in order for Google to decide where in the SERP’s YOU rank.
So content is of course important. But now the technical profile and performance is also very important!
Branding
Brand is defined by David Ogilvy (The Grand Daddy of advertising) as “The intangible sum of a product’s [or services] attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it’s advertised.”
“Brand” got its archaic derivations from America – and the cattle branding years of the western days of Cowboys. Searing with a hot iron on the cows hip, the distinct mark that sets THAT cow apart from the other peoples cows. (Because cows are naturally herding animals, the property owners needed a way to differentiate one cow from another owners cows.
Brand defined: “The encompassing paradigm (meaning, images, flavor, or other patterns) associated with the perceived value that surrounds your products or services and what sets it apart distinctly and quickly from the competition.” -jim akagi
SEO
In this ever-changing digital world, there’s a lot to keep up with. SEO is not just limited to Google. We’ve got to take into account all search engines. We’ve now got to take into account for things like Site Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, User Engagement, YMYL (Your Money, Your Life), E.A.T. (Expertise, Authoritative, and Trustworthiness.), domain authority, page authority, age of content, and all of the 200+ other ranking signals that Google now holds EVERYONE accountable for.
Development
Expertise and resourcesfulness and workhardedness…Let’s not just develop, but develop well and CRO the hell out what you develop!Be sure to provision your code with all the necessary items that Google is now looking for in order for them to better understand where you should rank and index. There are a myriad of things that you need to provide in your code that you really weren’t required to in the past. Those easy days of SEO are now LONG GONE!
2 comments
Like!! Really appreciate you sharing this blog post.Really thank you! Keep writing.
My pleasure. Hope it was insightful and helpful for you. If you have any topics that you would like me to blog/write about, let me know! 🙂