The main trade-off we have all made in recent years is loosing our guaranteed presence in the local phone book and replacing it for a potential global presence on the internet via search engine (Especially Google)
The problem for small businesses is that in an effort to avoid spam and time wasting search results the Google Algorithm now favours large business who ironically are more likely to be searched by their brand rather than their product.
How has this happened?
Early forms of Search Engine Optimisation relied largely upon the sheer number of back-links to determine the authenticity of a website. This lead to useless directories and link farms. These links were easy to get and could be largely automated, it still happens even this blog will receive many attempts of reply comments that are packed with back links despite the fact that these strategies are now proven to work against SEO with later algorithms.
The next generation changed to make a greater reliance on the content around the back-links and once again the SEO consultants found the way around this through automated or outsourced spinning of articles or even just constantly reposing the same articles wherever possible.
Once again this was closed with the checks for duplicate content and more advanced algorithms that can check to real writing as opposed to simply keyword stuffing.
Currently Social Media shares and discussions are sharing a weighting similar to that of relevant back-links.
Why is this a problem?
If you are a small business your social media sites aren't likely to extend legitimately beyond your circle of friends and your close clients, optimistically 100 - 200, these people aren't likely to be engaged in a great deal of conversation about your product as they already know about it anyway and will be self concious about "spamming" their friends walls.
On the other hand a major brand doesn't need to worry about SEO, because people are already talking about their product a linking their new products as part of their normal day to day activities.
What is the Solution?
Unfortunately it's not as simple "Tick and Flick" solution (yet) the need now is to make content that people will genuinely want to read, follow and share. This doesn't mean writing 250 words about your chosen keyword. It means to educate, amuse or reward your audience so much that they feel the need to pass your content to their friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment