The impetus for this week’s Overflow Podcast was a conversation with a potential client who had some misconceptions about the way in which organic rankings are achieved. It is a conversation that has happened numerous times in the past so we felt like it was a great topic for a podcast.
Of course, these notions are easy to understand in the general population because for years anyone who was building a web presence heard about the importance of Keywords.
Well as times and algorithms changed, and the tactic of keyword stuffing became a worn out practice, alternative ways of working up the SERPs became more important. With the changes taking place during 2009, site development must be geared towards the development of quality content.
There is no one better than Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay Inc. to explain where the algorithms are headed and what will rise up as the best practices for a web site owner, so here is a conversation with Mike McDonald of WebPro News:
For a site owner intending to develop their site with an eye toward the new paradigm for ranking and more importantly, converting traffic, what should they be concerned about if not Keywords (and inbound links by the way)?
Sites that are developed with rich media content incorporated as part of the overall strategy, with a complimentary social media campaign to assist with generating traffic, will lead towards better rankings and higher conversion rates.
The content is geared towards appearing where Universal Search is pulling in results for queries from numerous sources. Video, audio, photos, and other forms of content will deliver better results for a web site than a static model. Simultaneous to helping to get discovered via search results, this type of content has been proven to help convert site visitors once they have arrived at the site.
In the old days, traffic to a site was considered to be the best measure of success for search marketing, now the metrics are much more elaborate but give a clearer picture of site interaction. Things such as Bounce Rate, Time on Site, and Number of Pages viewed are more critical to getting conversions. With rich media and social networking campaigns you will see visitors spend much more time on the site, interacting with the content that is created and ultimately responding to the call to action.
Make sure to take advantage of alternative methods of distributing your rich media content such as TubeMogul versus just a singular location of YouTube. Seek out Blog Networks that have sites that are related to your topic so that their traffic can discover your content.
As we have mentioned in the past, this all leads to a quality discussion about creative content. Once rich media content has leveled out across most web sites and no longer acts as a differentiator for being discovered and converting, the next level revolves around producing better quality content that is more likely to achieve the intended results.
One company called Holophone has taken the approach of producing better quality audio on the web and has released 5.1 surround sound enabled video podcasts. This is the type of advancement and initiative that we will continue to see as convergence takes place throughout our surfing experience.
Are you focused on developing content that will help you appear in the search results ahead of your competitors? Have you put the keyword concerns on the back burner in your overall strategy?
