SEO, Semantics and Success

Yes it’s true! I am finding myself and my site on page one of loads of search terms, how cool is that?!!

Truth is it’s now easier than most people think, and please don’t be fooled into paying someone to do it for you because now that most search engines are using semantic search and the social graph it cannot be gamed or structured the way it used to. It is no longer a game that can be played or needs to be paid for, other than in time to build your social links and the way semantics work on search.

People who promise to put you on the first page of Google are scamming you, as these days it’s so easy! All they promise is to put you on the first page of Google under one key term or long tail phrase, this means that if your a hotel or resort in a beach town like Noosa, they will promise to put you on the first page under a long-tail phrase like: ‘family resort accommodation beach Noosa Heads Australia’. Not ‘resort’ or ‘Noosa accommodation’, only under that one long phrase in it’s exact form. So please don’t be fooled!

Now it’s a lot easier to rank for your key search terms if you follow the rules and are active on social media, plus when I reveal to you what semantic search really means later in this post you will also realise that search engine ranking is not where you really want to spend your hard earned money as it is now very localised.

My methods are so simple:

1. First and foremost I use great onsite content, which has all been on page optimized via a great WordPress plugin called SEO Ultimate and if you’re not on WordPress you can definitely still do this. However why not use the very same platform that Matt Cutts (head Google engineer) uses? He even mentions WordPress in his presentations on good SEO!
2. I add new content regularly to my site and make sure that the tags and keywords are relevant to the words used in the content, if they are not you will be ignored or worse penalised by the search engines. So do not use generic keywords through out your site – RELEVANCE is KEY!
3. Next I make sure to add keywords and phrases to each and every image that goes up on my site, and optimize them for the web so that they cut down on load times (load times also affect your ranking and SEO). Some of my images also come up on the first page of image searches under my main keywords!
4. I use great offsite content, all keyworded and tagged and all linking back to my site via social media, articles, video’s, audio’s, guest posts and more…
5. I am active daily on social media without being spammy or advertorial, just great content! this attracts my audience to read more and thereby increases my social graph via Likes, G+1′s, shares and more…
6. I know that because of semantic search my rankings are subjective!this is such an important point!!!!! by this I mean that just because my site is ranking on my computer under certain search terms does not mean it is ranking for those terms on anyone else’s computer! Yes, that’s right – all search is now localised to the search history of your personal computer/s and until you have checked your search rankings on other people’s computers who do not usually search for your site you cannot really tell how you are ranking under those search terms.This is the beauty and the beast of semantic search, it makes it nearly impossible to game the system as search is now based on your computer/s previous search history, plus good SEO practices as out lined above. This means that big businesses cannot hold it over you like they could before, it means that they cannot game the system, it also means that what shows up on your computer under those search terms will not necessarily be the same as those of your neighbour as his search history and habits may be different from yours.

So the upshot of this is, follow good advice from someone who knows how to SEO for Google, I follow the information coming from Google’s engineers, as stated in the bulletpoints 1-4. Plus understand what it now means to make page 1, now that semantic search is a part of our lives and stop obsessing about it, you cannot game it or make it work any better than by creating great content and adding to it regularly, making sure it is tagged and keyworded and use great relevant long-tails for your best results.

It’s just that easy and made easier by WordPress which is favoured by Google the worlds largest search engine because of it’s clean code and easy SEO on all pages and posts, and used by Google’s head engineer himself.

Related articles

• 10 Image Optimization Tips For Local SEO (bruceclay.com)
• Semantic HTML 5 and Better Search Engine Optimization (crazyleafdesign.com)