In a Google Webmaster Video dated March 7, 2011, Matt Cutts talked about “If you were an SEO of a large company, what would you include in your 2011 strategy?” In this video he talked about several things that are becoming increasingly important. These are issues that might not be commonly thought of in search engine optimization, but are extremely important to effectively optimize your site. The three, really four, things that Matt mentioned were site speed, good internal link, continual education on SEO, and social media integration with your site. the last point that Matt Cutts brought up is important because it means that Google is acknowledging that social media needs to be an integral part of SEO.
Reasons why those ideas are important for SEO:
Website Speed – Matt Cutts sites a lot of research that shown the faster your site the more likely it is for your customers to buy multiple products and stay longer. Site speed also helps in your ranking as far as Google is concerned. This is a perfect example of something that is fairly easy to do, but companies are often not intentional enough about it. Simple things like not making images higher quality then you need or deleting unused images.
Good Internal Link Structure – This is important for several reasons. First, it is beneficial to customer; good internal links an effective way to help your customers navigate through your website. Design a good website is all about putting yourself in your customers shoes. You need help them fill the pain that they have in their lives. Whether that is buying your product or finding some piece of information. Secondly, it also helps Search engines like Google get a better idea of the importance of your different pages on your site. You can use internal links to leverage certain pages and help their rank and highlight important pages.
SEO Awareness – Once again this is a common mistake that SEO experts make. you finally get everyone in their company on board for committing to doing effective Search Engine Optimiztion, and you mistakenly assume that they will continue to support you. This is just not true. People change, leave companies, and just forget or lose excitement or interest. It is important that you are constantly educating your company and keeping them excited about their commitment to SEO. In order to do affect SEO it needs to be a company mindset not just an occasional job.
Social Media Integration – First as mentioned above this is big because Google is telling us that social media is important for Search engine optimization. It means that people can no longer ignore Facebook and Twitter as some fad or childish waste of time. Social media marketing needs to be an integral part of having a web presence and doing effective SEO. Matt Cutts went on to that at this point Google does not place any ranking value from social media links like Facebook or Twitter, but they are great ways to tell people about your content and bring them to your site. This could eventually lead to people linking to you or writing blogs about you. So social media can indirectly lead to links and increase traffic. This also bring up the thought that eventually social media links will have “link juice” associated with them because more and more user seem to really want companies to be on social media as well.
In a Google Webmaster Video dated March 7, 2011, Matt Cutts talked about “If you were an SEO of a large company, what would you include in your 2011 strategy?” In this video he talked about several things that are becoming increasingly important. These are issues that might not be commonly thought of in search engine optimization, but are extremely important to effectively optimize your site. The three, really four, things that Matt mentioned were site speed, good internal link, continual education on SEO, and social media integration with your site. the last point that Matt Cutts brought up is important because it means that Google is acknowledging that social media needs to be an integral part of SEO.
Social Media Integration – First as mentioned above this is big because Google is telling us that social media is important for Search engine optimization. It means that people can no longer ignore Facebook and Twitter as some fad or childish waste of time. Social media marketing needs to be an integral part of having a web presence and doing effective SEO. Matt Cutts went on to that at this point Google does not place any ranking value from social media links like Facebook or Twitter, but they are great ways to tell people about your content and bring them to your site. This could eventually lead to people linking to you or writing blogs about you. So social media can indirectly lead to links and increase traffic. This also bring up the thought that eventually social media links will have “link juice” associated with them because more and more user seem to really want companies to be on social media as well.