Staying current in search engine marketing is important.
So let’s talk a bit about how you can keep your marketing and your on-page SEO up to date for the rest of 2013 and beyond!
How Penguin 2.0 Has Changed Search Engine Marketing
Penguin 2.0 is focused almost solely on links, both your own and your backlinks.
Relevance is the most important watchword here: You want links to and from websites which are relevant to your business and to the topic at hand. Too many links from unaffiliated or overly-generalized websites can hurt your SERPs, as it often indicates link-buying or other underhanded methods that Google is trying to stamp out.
Your anchor texts are another primary focus of Google’s changes. Previously, it had been traditional in SEO to focus on anchor text which was an exact match for your keywords. Google frowns on this practice, as it is fairly blatant advertising, and instead is now looking for a variety of anchor texts that flow organically from the article.
Honestly, what this boils down to is simply to link like a regular human being. Don’t force your links, and don’t flood your article with exact-match keyword anchor text. Link naturally to sources -internal or external- as is appropriate, using anchor text that’s relevant to that link, rather than to your keywords.
Changing Keyword Usage Going Forward
The art of keywords themselves has changed significantly in the last few months as well. Previously, the rule of thumb was that for good SERPs, you wanted one or two keywords, each making up roughly 1-2% of the text. This is, of course, a fairly simplistic way of identifying what your article is about, so it’s unsurprising that Google’s methods have become more refined.
Google is now using a process known as Latent Semantic Indexing, which allows it to more accurately deduce the content of your webpages without relying on heavy-handed keywords. As a result, having a keyword-heavy page is now being depreciated in search engine results.
While no one has yet found specific numbers or percentages to use, as a rule of thumb, you should focus on varying up your keyword usage within the text by using variations and\or synonyms. Try not to repeat the same keyword more than a few times in any one article.
This, however, can actually free you to increase your keyword usage. Since you no longer have to worry about shoehorning the same phrase into an article over and over, it gives you more freedom in your writing. You can discuss more broad topics, without worrying about “confusing” the search engine spiders.
Use Location-Aware Optimization
When you’re looking to boost your social appeal and help reduce your bounce numbers, think about where your visitors may be when they see it.
With the rise of mobile devices, your leads may be absolutely anywhere and still view your webpage – but their surroundings are going to be influencing their state of mind, and that affects how they see you and how much time they’ll give you. Plus, location-based keyword targeting is a great search engine marketing strategy.
If many of your leads are going to be looking up information on you at a point of sale, such as in a store, it needs to be short, captivating, and to the point. On the other hand, a businessperson looking up information at home in the evening is likely looking for more detailed information and infographics.
Remember that use of location-based social media services are on the rise as well, so having a website designed to optimize location-aware searching will also help encourage social sharing among people in person as well!
Constantly Re-evaluate Your Link Profile
What this all adds up to is a need for online marketers to closely monitor your site’s links, both inbound and outbound. As time allows, you may even want to begin cleaning your own blogs of bad links and overly-focused keyword use, as Penguin 2.0 now reads and evaluates all the content on your site.
Getting rid of poor backlinks is harder, but potentially necessary if you believe they are dragging your SERP down. Often, you can simply request a website stop linking to you. However, if this fails, Google does offer a link disavowal tool to distance your website from inbound links you don’t want.
Some days I wish the pace of change in search engine marketing would slow down a bit, but it’s just not happening. Keep up-to-date, and keep an eye on your metrics! SEO success will soon follow.
About Daniel Tan
