In 2005 when the Huffington Post came online, it’s founders Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, Jonah Peretti, and briefly, Andrew Breitbart, understood the future of the Internet was in content. Search Engine Optimization was the buzz word of the time and Marketers started playing games to find short cuts to the top organic search listings. Google responded with new algorithms, which black listed the sites that did not follow Google’s mission, to provide users with the best experience possible.

SEO

 

SEO, or search engine optimization is important to any business to drive traffic to their website through search engine traffic. How it works is at best an educated guesstimate and the search engine companies change their algorithms regularly, which changes the rules of SEO. The main key to SEO success seems to be content and like the movie Field of Dreams, if you create good content, traffic will come.

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Google is the most used search engine, however there are other search engines with their own algorithms and missions, each one providing its users organic search results based on web content and activity. What seems to be important is:

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1. Consistency

2. Relevancy

3. Recency

 

Imagine Google is a person standing on a stage in a stadium filled with people. He shouts out a keyword and everyones hands go up. He then starts asking more questions about what you know about that keyword. Then he asks how much content contains that keyword? Some hands go down. How many post about that keyword each week? How many posted that keyword just yesterday? From there he choses the top four to six people with their hands up to join him on the stage.

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This is a very simple example of how SEO works because it is a very complex beast. It gives points for and against a page based on policies in place to assess the quality of the page and the site as a whole. No one can tell you exactly how to get to the top, only that by following certain guidelines it is possible.

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The amount of organic real estate shrunk when Google placed the adword links at the top of the search list. The growing number of companies focusing on SEO and content marketing has increased the competition for the prime top organic spots. It is harder than ever to get to the top of organic searches, so a plan of action must be diverse.

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SEO, though important is only one method of obtaining traffic and leads for businesses. Content is the method which marketers use to tell a story and get the attention of the marketplace. By understanding content, how people interact with it, and which platforms are best suited for each piece of content, a marketing department can develop a successful campaign.