Important Google Keyword Changes

It used to be that SEO could be defined using two broad categories: keywords, a.k.a. on-page SEO; and links, a.k.a. off-page SEO. The basic strategy was to aggregate as many of each in order to beat your competitors in the search results and rank as high as possible.

Google has made two recent changes that make it harder to discern keywords: First, they now only provide access to some keywords from Google Analytics' Webmaster Tools. You now need an Adwords account to access their new Keyword Planner Tool. Second, they are encrypting keyword results in most situations, making keyword results unavailable to marketers even when using the Keyword Planner tool.

According to Google, SEO is "about making small [meaningful] modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your site's user experience and performance in organic search results … [where] your ultimate consumers are your users, not search engines."

Marketers should consider using alternative tools like www.similarsites.com or marketing.grader.com for competitor research.

And more than ever, marketers should rely on a more common sense approach to SEO: Develop more unique, in-depth, high-quality content with the approach that if it is useful, they will come. The content that best attracts your target market will be educational in nature. Your blog is an excellent (if not the best) place on your site to provide this helpful material, and one of the most effective ways to share this content with the world is through social media. When your audience regularly shares content via your social posts, tweets, etc., your site's overall page ranking will improve.