SEO has been in the talks of internet marketing quite often, especially in the recent times, when the search has evolved to a much more advanced version of it, called Semantic Search and the credit goes to Google for the great work.
With the advent of semantic search and Google’s efforts of punishing low quality or spam websites, the talks about SEO have increased, people are discussing about the existence of SEO, whether it’s dead or not, etc.
Everybody is searching for the secret ingredient in the recipe of successful SEO and I will be revealing the secret ingredient here in this post, so are you guys ready to know about the secret ingredient? Here it comes, and the secret ingredient is “nothing – there is no secret ingredient”, yes, this is the fact, there is no secret ingredient at all and this is the secret. Your SEO efforts can’t become successful just because there is a secret technique of doing so, this is not how things work in the organic search world.
As many things in life SEO will also require honest and high quality efforts, there are no shortcuts to it. It will take time and the due diligence. Although, there is no secret ingredient, but we could consider an equation based on the right ways for search engine optimization and it works in the current times when search is evolving.
The Secret Equation:
Contemporary SEO = {(On Page Semantic SEO) + (Off Page Semantic SEO) + (Social Media Marketing) + (Content Marketing)} X (Engagement)
Short Equation:
C-SEO = (OnSe + OffSe + SMM + CM) x E
Where:-
C-SEO = Contemporary SEO
OnSe = On Page Semantic SEO
OffSe = Off Page Semantic SEO
SMM = Social Media Marketing
CM = Content Marketing
E = Engagement
Now, understand the components of this equation in detail one by one:
Contemporary SEO: I have not taken this as semantic SEO, because I wanted to show that this equation is about modern SEO, which is nothing but Semantic SEO. The word “Contemporary” is used to express, that it is not a traditional SEO equation; it is about the SEO of today, fresh and modern.
On Page Semantic SEO: Semantic search is the base of modern SEO strategies; therefore the word “semantic” is an integral part of modern SEO. On-page semantic SEO takes into account all the on-page optimization factors of SEO, to name a few, title tag optimization, description tag optimization, content optimization, website structure optimization, internal linking optimization etc, the focus here is not on the search engines, but on the users or the people. Under On-Page semantic SEO, the title and description tags, other meta tags, content are not to be stuffed with the keywords, instead, people who are the targets are to be thought about, their intent is to be thought about, most of the times they will be using natural language, there may be a question or a statement, all these factors which relate to people need to be thought about in order to come up with good semantic on-page SEO.
Website structure should be user focused, internal linking should make navigation easy for the users, content should be of value to the users, there are whole lot of factors, basically all the on-page factors need be based on people more rather than search engines (but of course search engine shouldn’t be totally ignored).
Off Page Semantic SEO: Traditionally, off-page SEO has always been about building links, more and more links by not caring too much about the quality, but at present, the time is about off-page semantic SEO. The emphasis is on building relationships under this approach and not on building links, links are by products of relationships with people. Off-page Semantic SEO is actually a holistic approach which takes into account Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Content Marketing (CM) both. It’s about building relationships with your target audience, other people who are interested in your offerings and it is also about encouraging people’s engagement.
Therefore, the two prominent components of off-page semantic SEO are SMM and CM, as these components can help in people’s engagements, building relationships and eventually building high quality back links as well. Since it is all semantic search based, therefore; there is no space for low quality thin content or for any kind of spam.
Social Media Marketing: Social media has evolved in leaps and bounds over a period of time, contemporary SMM is not only about some FB likes, Google Plus ones, or twitter followers, it is more than all of this. Social media marketing is an incredible tool for engaging people with your business. Through social media you could even provide you target audience the personal touch that everybody looks for. SMM is all about communication with your target audience and nothing else.
Do not try to yell and sell on social media platforms, people will run away from you if you do such a nasty thing. Talk about related things in which people are interested, encourage participation of people, give them confidence of communicating with you, respond to their queries. Social media is a great marketing platform, but it’s ever changing, keeping a track on the developments in the technology, market trends and people’s tastes and preferences is inevitable.
Content Marketing: Content is the king and it will remain the king forever, content is pervasive on the internet and that’s why you have to focus on high quality content which could create value for people. Content marketing plays an important role in creating people’s engagement as well as it makes search engines happy.
Content should always create some value for the people using it, if the content shared with people is not able to create value for them, they will not even see your content again. A great content could be anything, an article, blog post, video, photo/ image, info-graphic, etc. Content reach can be enhanced through various social media platforms. To make your content marketing efforts successful it is also important to participate in others’ content marketing efforts by visiting their website and providing them your valuable comments etc.
Content marketing can be both, on-website and off-website. Creating a blog on your website for sharing high quality articles or videos will be a great idea which could help in improving people’s engagement with your website and such content can be shared on myriad social media platforms as well. You can also prepare content for your external blogs or properties; you can use those properties to build long term relationships with people. Spreading same content in various article directories with links in it is the worst SEO idea these days.
Engagement: It is nothing but people’s engagement with your business online and even offline as well, it is very important to engage people with your website, they need to be talking about you and your business on the internet and off it. The more effective the engagement of people will be, more will be the effectiveness of all the above depicted contemporary SEO factors. Contemporary SEO is nothing but Semantic SEO multiplied by engagement.
Engaging people to your business will require time and huge efforts. Trying to achieve engagement is a perpetual process, it needs team work. Your whole company’s departments should sit in a meeting and share their points of views in building a people’s engagement plan; it’s not a job of your SEO only. Actually, every employee in the company plays a vital role in building engagement with the target audience and the other concerned people.
Conclusion: Contemporary SEO is majorly about people, not the search engines
