The Golden Age of SEO is long over. They days when you could hire a specialist and get overnight results are gone. There were a lot of smart people out there who soon had the search engine algorithms completely reverse-engineered. With little expenditure, you could get yourself on the first page of most search engines that fast. Of course, this also produced a disruptive effect. Given it was that easy to rank so high, there was a short time when SERP’s (search engine result pages) were filled with garbage. If you searched for custom-built cabinets, the top of the first page was filled with ads for insurance companies and dick pills. It’s very reasonable to see why the search engines didn’t like this. However, there is one thing the SEO industry didn’t tell you. After you spent hundreds (or more) getting to the first page, by the time you checked your rankings a week or two later your great rankings were gone. You had to keep spending money in order to remain on the first page. This was bad news for small businesses, as only the larger ones with deeper pockets could persist. Then one day, Google started blowing it all up. What worked one day didn’t work the next.
Starting in 2011, Google started a series of algorithm updates code named Panda. They soon moved on to other updates with names like Penguin, Caffeine and May Day. The algorithms completely changed the way Google ranks sites. No longer could you spend a nominal sum and go from page 10 to page 1 overnight. Instead, they looked at other items such as the 1) quality of your markup and code, 2) page traffic, 3) backlinks, 4) URL structures, 5) XML site maps, 6) internal linking strategies and the list goes on. The rankings now weren’t only about what you didn’t do (blacklist techniques), but the quality of your page. One of the biggest items not mentioned above is content. Content is king, plain and simple. Search engines also want to make sure your business is active and going concern as opposed to a landing page or site. The algorithms look at social media, your post frequency and the form of your posts. (They like self-generated videos.) Things such as blog posts with frequent updates also matter. If you have a YouTube channel with custom content, that will go a long way to your rankings. I could go on and one, but you get the point.
This approach to page rankings makes sure SERP’s are of the highest quality, which plays well for the search engine company and the end-user. Many of today’s site quality issues are sufficiently solved with so many content management systems running websites. CMS’s such as WordPress and Joomla! are already built with great SEO features, and they easily allow you to do more. Same with sites like Squarespace and Wix. eCommerce CMS’s such as WooCommerce (WordPress plugin) are also well designed for SEO.
If you’re a micro business it could be bad news, but it depends on your industry. If you’re selling a niche item and have less competition, great. However, if you’re a small insurance broker it will be much tougher. In that case, you’re better off concentrating on geocentric rankings. No matter how you approach it, in addition to the other many other items a small business owner has to do on a daily basis, you must constantly update your online content to rank higher. The advice I give to small business owners who ask me about SEO is this: use a CMS and constantly update your content. Over time, you will learn how to do more and more with regard to enhancing your results beyond the built-in features. Unless your small business has the financial resources to hire a company or dedicated marketer, you’re on your own and that’s the truth.
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