SEO Service and Information

Its no secret – anyone can perform SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, on their website! In fact, most entrepreneurs or otherwise internet-savvy website owners have read a book or two (or dozens) on the subject, or have researched keyword optimization, or have at least heard the term “backlink” at some point in the past 10 years… which is great! This means that many of my clients know the importance of Search Engine Optimization, but it also presents some very interesting obstacles in the “Client/SEO Expert” relationship – getting away from dated ideas and practices that will actually hurt SEO.

What you need to know about SEO

I’ll cut to the point – unless you’ve been heavily researching the current state of SEO within the past week, there is a good chance that your SEO knowledge is practically obsolete. Google introduces somewhere between 400-600+ ranking and search algorithm changes per year (some sources will tell you the number is well over 1,000)… The exact number is not important – what is important is understanding how this affects the way I do SEO.

Adapting SEO to Google Algorithm Changes

Lets keep it simple – Since there are so many (daily) minor ranking algorithm changes, how and why my website ranks for “Indianapolis SEO services” today might be drastically different tomorrow. This also means is that the way two different (or competitor) websites rank for the same key words or search query can also vary greatly.

Up until a few years ago, optimizing a web page for a certain keyword or topic used to be fairly straight forward. Almost every potential client I speak with still views SEO as:

• Using your keywords a certain amount or % per page
• Backlinks. As many as possible. Anchor text matching or containing keyword.
• PBNs and Web Directory submissions

In today’s SEO world, these things will have a highly negative impact on your sites overall reputation, and cause you to rank lower than your competitors who, for instance, use the same keywords but with less frequency.

Are you rolling your eyes yet? If so, I don’t blame you – almost all of my clients have heard a similar spiel from their last SEO guy or web designer or marketing agency, but they still received poor or lackluster results given the amount of money they invested in this whole SEO thing. Why is this?

I don’t actually have an answer for you. Sorry… But! What I can say is this: In most cases, previously completed SEO work goes no further than basic “best practices.” There is a plethora of information regarding SEO best practices on the web, and most people who can use a word processor can edit their site and implement these best practices. Many agencies do the same as soon as they are hired to begin SEO.

Unfortunately, this is where I see most SEO agencies stop. 

Best Practices and Guaranteed Rankings

The Architek Guarantee: Nothing!

Implementing best practices on a site which lacked them will normally show positive and immediate results! The client feels as though the agency knows what they are doing and continues to spend more money (without any long term SEO results or rankings), until they ultimately start looking for another SEO company.

What I think sets me and my SEO apart from some of the others is my obsession with the data I observe as a result of my work, rather than the methods I employ to get to the front page. When it comes time to really dig in and start increasing SERP placement, I ask my self two questions:

• What is that website doing better than this website? This involves “best practices” and technical SEO:
  • Best practices – On-page SEO, content, images, alt tags, use of h1-h6, etc.
  • Technical SEO – page speed, page size, load times, script loading, server configuration, proper DNS, site mapping, structure, analytics… and many more.
• Most importantly: what makes that website more relevant to a given search query than this website?

If a given SEO technique affected all website rankings in the same manner, “SEO” wouldn’t really be a thing, would it? Using machine learning and AI, Googles search algorithms largely determine what results to display for a user based on a sites relevance to a user’s search query, taking into account the users’ search intent and even user interaction and user experience metrics… Pretty wild, no? Static ranking factors like how many times a keyword is used on a page are a thing of the past!