Case Studies in SEO Intuition: What Guides and Tutorials Won’t Teach You

Abhilash Patel
Aug 22, 2017 · 4 min read

Search is the backbone of the digital experience. It’s where we go to find answers to our most pressing questions or persistent curiosities. It’s also a potential minefield for businesses and individuals attempting to stay ahead of the curve and appear in search higher and more consistently than the competition.

One of the biggest problems we see in SEO is the obsession with tactics. What works today? How do we adjust for the most recent updates? How do we understand the technologies influencing rankings right now?

There is an entire industry devoted to the topic, and thousands of experts who, when asked, will have a slightly different bit of advice to follow. So how do you stay ahead of the curve and maintain SEO effectiveness when there are so many internal and external factors that influence it constantly?

Here are three situations that have had a profound impact on SEO, showing why it is so important to be ready for anything that might happen.

Google’s Algorithmic Updates

Google has been making incremental updates to their algorithm for nearly 20 years. A review of Moz’s timeline shows named updates dating back to February 2003, but many of these updates were index related, and while they forced people into the 21st century of SEO, it was the setting of the table — the way things would be for years to come.

And while there are hundreds of Google algorithm updates every year, it is the very big ones that have the most influence. Panda, released February 23, 2011, for example, affected 12% of all search results, cracking down on sites that had thin content and other quality issues. It was the first-time content was really on the map for SEO’s and it was refined several times in the following years.

Penguin came a little over a year later, on April 24, 2012, and affected 3.1% of searches, largely targeting web spam such as over-optimization of certain keywords.

The following year, on August 20, 2013, Hummingbird was released, comprehensively overhauling the semantic search functions of the tool and the Knowledge Graph.

There have been others — well beyond the big names. Local search updates. Mobile updates. Content frequency and general quality updates. The issue faced by SEOs who were unprepared for these updates was the sheer sweeping scope of them. Someone who was using webspam tactics and minimal or duplicate content may have spent month fighting to recover from the penalties presented by these updates. It’s not just about tactics, but how you approach an SEO campaign philosophically for future updates.

Sure you, you can do everything by the book today, but what about tomorrow? How can we mitigate risk over time?

For the most part, it’s about understanding Google’s vision of search. For them, it’s not just a tool to make money. It’s a resource that needs to provide the best possible answers to a given query. If a site is filled with ads, or doesn’t load on a mobile device, or has duplicate content from a larger site — it’s not a useful resource and logically shouldn’t be ranked as high. Combined with careful evaluation of the technology behind these evaluations, it’s possible to stay abreast of the direction search is headed, taking a more proactive stance.

Competition with Other Companies

Google’s not-always clear vision of the future can be challenging to prepare for, but competition is a constant — one you are probably well prepared for as a business owner.

Even if you have been incredibly savvy and built a strong platform that is well optimized and has risen to the top of the rankings, you’ll never own that real estate forever. Whether an upstart comes along with new tactics skewed towards upcoming algorithm changes, or you are unable to maintain the high level of optimization over a certain period, it’s possible for anyone to be overtaken at any time.

The key here is to monitor your competition always, looking for the signs that someone has started to make a move. Tools like Moz, AHREFs, and Raven Tools allow you to keep track of huge chunks of data — from rankings, to incoming domain and page links to the specific page that are generating traffic, not just for you but for your competitors.

By tracking these things, you can be ready if someone starts to invest more heavily in SEO and make moves in the rankings.

Negative Sentiment

The core of Google’s algorithm is the review. The idea that an opinion from a highly-trusted source is a primary driver in who ranks for what. This is most pronounced in local searches, where review sites take up more and more of the page one real estate.

If you search for “best pizza in Brooklyn” you’re more likely to get review aggregators and directories than you are a single website. Moreover, if your business has a bad review on one of these sites, how do you combat it to keep from suffering in such an environment?

Having a reputation management plan in place is vital. It should include Google Alerts monitoring for your brand name, social media listening to track any mentions of your brand, and at least one person in your organization who actively engages people immediately if there is a problem. The only thing worse than a negative review is one without a response.

Being Proactive is a Must to Manage Your SEO

It’s likely that the small websites using 1990’s tactics weren’t ready for major algorithm updates and that even the largest businesses weren’t ready for upstarts to devour search engine market share with clever SEO campaigns.

In such a fast-moving world, anything can happen, which is why a reactive rather than proactive SEO strategy is so dangerous. Do your research, stay up to date on the current trends and tactics, and be a true expert in SEO — no matter who manages it for you. Only then can you rest easier knowing that you won’t fall into one of the above traps.

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Abhilash Patel

Written by

Proven entrepreneur with multiple exits, digital marketing executive, active investor, philanthropist, and aspiring triathlete.

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