Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art of tailoring your website to be picked up and ranked by search engines (usually without paying). The rules are never explicitly published, but people learn them through experimentation and pushing limits.

Once upon a time, this meant you could get a number 1 spot for a keyword by spamming that keyword in one giant paragraph at the bottom of your page, regardless of the rest of your content. The rules evolved and so did the techniques to rank. It was a technological arms race.

Sites who followed trends too closely were often rocked by the next update. Sites who survived focused on providing a good experience:

1. Honest content. Keyword stuffing was often used to try and rank for valuable keywords without providing any value. Visitors who did visit often left quickly. If a website provided the content promised from the search, users stuck around longer. (This is known as the bounce rate.)

2. Clear and helpful headers. Headers break up long content like chapters. Descriptive headers informed visitors about exact content and often caught long-tail (multi-word) searches. These searches (such as “how to delete photo background”) meant that visitors were looking for something actionable. Well-written headers helped them find what they needed to complete their task.

3. Accurate image descriptions. Image descriptions in alt texts were also crawlable by search engines. If the images were, again, accurate and helpful, visitors often stayed longer to learn what they needed to.

While not a perfect system, the best way to ride the waves of SEO algorithm changes is to make sure your website provides what the search results promised.

Who knows what the future holds? But integrity matters.

Talk soon!
Ed