The demise of rogue algorithm hunters
Not a single beam of sun shone in that black market. You could barely see the face of the rogue algorithm hunter, hidden under his black hat.
“Here’s the gold. Now, give me my backlinks.” – he said.
A long road had taken our algorithm hunter there. Trying to stay on top of a sandstorm of continuous changes, exhaustion and desperation had carried him to the dark side. But now, he was dreaming of returning to his site, and finally reaping the rewards of cheating the system.
Except that those rewards never came, because his site became impossible to find. His bad arts cost him his chance of an eventual recovery.
Fortunately, this story about short term gains and permanent loses has never happened to my clients, because I always kept my white hat SEO approach focused in what really matters for both, you and the search engines.
My approach to effective, sustainable SEO
Is there hope for SEO in the modern world? Chasing an ever-changing algorithm typically leads to a death by exhaustion, while trying to game the search engines is hardly punished with a swift penalty.
Enter sustainable SEO strategies: they will provide results without draining your resources, they will work hand-in-hand with your marketing strategy, and they won’t be sharply affected by future algorithm changes.
The approach to good sustainable SEO sounds deceptively simple. Find out what your users are looking for. Write content that satifies their needs. Make your site easy to discover and read by search engines. And be sure to stay away from tricks that could erase the good results that all your other steps were getting you.
This strategy has allowed me to increase traffic to my client’s websites, and even to remove search engine penalties from them (either implicit or even explicit) because at its core, it follows the very guidelines that search engines encourage: offer your target users the quality content they are looking for, and make your site as accessible as possible.
In practice, it implies considering a good array of parameters, and laying things out carefully. Then, you would just need to stick to the plan, read your data, and occassionally optimize specific areas.
But treat your SEO like a stock market investment: never panic on short-term fluctuations, and stay calm till your achieve your goals.
Moreover, don’t forget that your main focus should stay on your clients. SEO and UX work together: while SEO brings in the traffic, User Experience optimization allows you to do more with the traffic you already have. You achieve your goals when you increase your conversions, and optimizing the user experience of those users who already know you can be more controllable than putting all your efforts in new traffic gains.
Are you ready to implement a sustainable SEO strategy that will increase your exposure? Leave the technical bits to me, and let’s get started.