SEO 2011 versus SEO 2016

How Google is evolving and how it affects your dental website.

Google is evolving constantly and it’s our role as digital marketers to try and make sense of the changes and adapt our clients’ websites and marketing campaigns so that they continue to perform well in the search results. I’ll be the first to admit that this is not as easy as it sounds, particularly as Google keeps the inner workings of its search engine a very closely guarded secret.

However, what we can do is monitor trends, research and test best practice techniques and generally work within the official web publishing guidelines to achieve best results. We also have the advantage of working with hundreds of dentists websites and the usage data which is available to us via tools such as Google Analytics. As such, even though we would never profess to know exactly how any search engine works, we can see empirically what works and what doesn’t.

With those thoughts in mind, I thought it would be useful to summarise my own thoughts on how Google has changed over the last five years and where it looks to be heading in the near future. Let’s start by taking a look at the SEO techniques which worked back in 2011 and the significant changes which have occurred since then.

SEO 2011 style

Back around 2011, it was still relatively easy to manipulate Google rankings with clumsy, mass link-building. Whilst Google was starting to tackle on-page spam such as keyword stuffing quite effectively and also taking down “thin” content sites via its “Panda” updates, mass links would still help websites rise to the top of the rankings.

A couple of dental marketing agencies focused on this and built a reputation as being SEO “ninjas” using these clumsy but effective techniques. For a short while their clients prospered, however Google was watching and clamped down hard on mass link-building with its “Penguin” update in 2012. As we’ve illustrated elsewhere in this blog, prominent dentists websites crashed out of Google literally overnight and their businesses suffered significantly as a result. Getting such penalised websites back into Google is a huge task and some never recovered; needing to start afresh with a new domain name.

The more conservative and considered SEO guys amongst us realised that the only way to make sustainable progress was to invest in quality – so making sure that both the on-page and off-page SEO work was within Google’s publishing guidelines and as natural as possible. This way we were able to keep all of our websites penalty free and also still prominently placed.

After Google’s link purge and close scrutiny of on-page content via their Penguin and Panda updates, it became clear that the only way to make safe progress in Google was via high-quality, time-consuming techniques – and this is even more apparent today.

SEO 2015 style…. and onwards

So what do we need to do to ensure that a website makes steady but sure progress in the search rankings and when prominent, stays there?

There is all sorts of nonsense talked about search engine optimisation and whilst Google has officially stated that it takes over 200 different ranking signals into account, websites which have the following key characteristics will typically fare well in the search results:

• excellent, unique content, correctly optimised for users and search engines
• a website structure conforming to best-practice design and web authoring standards
• fast loading pages
• engaging content – features such as video holds a users attention and keep them “on-page” – Google can measure this
• a large footprint. Whilst smaller websites can rank, experience suggests that those with more pages of suitable high quality, rank better and for more search terms
• clearly differentiated information – different treatments need their own unique, optimised pages
• regular updates – it is becoming more and more apparent that Google favours fresh content; well-maintained blogs and page updates score well; stagnant fails
• links back to the website – these are still important but need to be of a decent quality and relevant – or prepare to be penalised
• active social media – whilst the jury is still out one whether Google currently uses social media activity as part of its ranking algorithm, “social” serves a range of useful purposes as explained in an earlier blog here.
• complementary content generation such as a practice blog and by publishing relevant information on third-party channels, e.g. Slideshare, LinkedIn etc

Google is making it clear that websites which are useful to a searcher and solve their problems, will rise to the top of the search index. Factors which affect this are measurable and Google is doing all it can to measure the performance of websites in ever-more sophisticated ways. The list of characteristics above are all related to the quality of a website and ultimately its ability to serve the needs of its users best. Get all of it right and you can be fairly sure that Google will work this out and boost your search positions. Any why wouldn’t it? You’ll be doing everything to fulfill their success criteria so why wouldn’t you expect to be recognised and promoted?

Understood, but all that sounds like hard work….?

Sure it is and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Quick SEO wins have gone and so you need to be prepared to invest in your website if you want it to work for you. Trust me, Google will spot you if you slip back to the techniques of earlier years!

Summary

The days of fooling Google are well and truly over. To achieve success you need to strive to make sure that your website is best-in-class and serves your users better than your local competitors. This means that you need to invest time (and money) in your web presence and digital marketing to signal to Google that you are worthy of those top ranking positions. Any attempt to trick will be short-lived and will fail, possibly with an unrecoverable penalty where you are ditched from the search index.

If you acknowledge the challenge and are keen to develop a website which achieves its full potential, please call us on 01332 672548. One of the Dental Media digital marketing team will be pleased to offer no-obligation advice on the next steps.