Beware of the Bandwagon

Are you in the habit of jumping on the latest SEO bandwagon?

If you’re the kind of person who scours the webmaster and Internet marketing forums for the latest loophole and fast track to high rankings, it’s time you stopped.

Chasing after shortcuts and tricks that will give you a boost in the rankings is ultimately counterproductive. What you need to focus on is providing value. Here’s why.

Avoid Bandwagon SEO

Matt Cutts, Google head of web spam, recently said in a video that he saw a common pattern in SEO forums. A user would suggest a new technique for ranking and soon everyone is using it. He cited examples of ‘fads’ such as article directories, guest blogging and links wheels that had come and gone.

The fact is that there are no shortcuts to real online success. The only way to succeed is through solid work driven by a concern for the needs of your website users.

As Cutts pointed out, if someone found a smart back door into online success, he wouldn’t share it on a public forum. He’d keep it to himself and get right to work exploiting it.

He also had a simple answer for all those people who devote their lives to divining what Google wants. “We’re just thinking about how to make our search results better,” he said. He added that aligning yourself with this goal is the way to online success.

matt cutts

Happy Users are Loyal Users

Continuing on the theme of Google’s objectives, Cutts said, “We want to return really good search results to users so that they’re happy so that they’ll keep coming back.”

Cutts said that you should never be afraid to think for yourself. But it has to be the right kind of thinking. Rather than “how can I rank better?” you should ask yourself “how can I provide more value to my visitors?” Do that right and the rankings will take care of themselves.

Of course you need to optimise your site so that it has the best chance of ranking for you chosen keywords. But ultimately this can only work if it optimises a quality site that provides what visitors are searching for.

As Cutts said, happy users are loyal users. So keep your visitors happy with informative content and a quality user experience and they’ll reward you by becoming loyal customers and sharing your site with their acquaintances.

Keeping up with SEO and Internet marketing news is a necessary and productive activity. But the next time you see the bandwagon coming along, let it leave without you. You can be sure it’s on a dead end journey.

If you need professional help in ranking your website and boosting traffic and leads, get in touch with Smart SEO today.

About Nathanael Vanderkolk

Nathanael Vanderkolk is the Director of the Smart SEO Company, a SEO Agency in Sydney, Australia. Smart SEO Sydney has a keen awareness of the latest approaches to online marketing. Follow him on , Facebook and Twitter.
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