Honest SEO is Effective SEO

image courtesy of seo.com

Last week a tweet directed me to a good article on SEO from Mashable. It talked about changes in search algorithms and the rise of content marketing has put a premium on creating content humans want to read, as opposed to trying to game the system with black hat tricks. Honest SEO is now the most effective SEO.

I’ve previously written about achieving organic SEO success the right way for clients, through the consistent publication of quality content properly optimized and promoted.  This quarter we helped place three keyword phrases on the first page of Google for a client offering a cloud-based service management tool for commercial assets. I’ve also achieved such success personally for this site following the same strategy. So it’s very satisfying to read that pursuing improved SEO the ethical way has now become  acknowledged as the most effective way as well.

Here’s a graphic from the Mashable article that shows the change in how online content is evaluated over the past 10 years, and why good content marketing supports improved SEO:

Our B2B and B2G clients are always looking for quality over quantity traffic. So they are rarely as tempted by the promises of the black hat practitioners and the content farms as B2C companies often can be. SEO improvement is never the end goal with our engagements; the end goal is always the integration of content marketing with sales and a demonstrable assist to deal flow. But SEO rankings are an important marketing metric, and a good indication that your content is resonating with your desired audiences.

Mashable quotes SEOmoz.org CEO Rand Fishkin as giving the five rules for how your content marketing can ethically increase your organic SEO:

1. Create content that people will have an incentive to share.
2. Do keyword research, so you don’t waste effort writing about things people don’t care about.
3. Put all your content on the same domain/subdomain. (e.g. don’t use blog.mysite.com, use mysite.com/blog)
4. Stand for something, and write about it. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
5. Don’t separate your brand from your content. For instance, casino sites that make fascinating infographics about animal rights aren’t going to last long.

I’d just add to that list thinking like a publisher not a promoter, and you’re on your way to honest SEO that achieves your business objectives. It’s always a great feeling to do well by doing good.