Every other week, a post appears on major news sites eulogizing
search engine optimization (SEO). “SEO Is Dead!” the headline reads—a
bold statement, but one that’s not entirely without truth. SEO is
changing rapidly. What makes for good SEO now will almost certainly be
obsolete in a few years. In fact, it’s changed so much in the past few
years that things that were once mainstays are now considered dangerous
and detrimental.
As Google and other search engines continue to evolve, so do the
tools and strategies self-storage operators use to optimize their search
engine presence. Indeed, it seems that as long as there are search
engines to optimize, there will be something called SEO (although what
the SEO of the future will look like we can only guess). In other words:
SEO is dead; long live SEO.
What Does SEO Even Mean?
SEO is a concept that some self-storage operators misunderstand—and
to their peril. When people think of SEO, they most often think of
keywords. Many imagine it to be similar to that universal childhood
pastime: grape-stuffing. Like the child who stuffs his mouth full of
grapes, the operator stuffs a website full of keywords. These days, you
might actually be better off sticking with the grapes.
Keyword-stuffing, link-farming, spamming—these are relics of past SEO
strategies. They exist now on the fringes of the industry, the
so-called black-hat SEO. There was once a time when these tactics worked
well, but as Google has developed ways of filtering for sites that
engage in these activities, they’ve been far less useful.
How Bad SEO Can Hurt You
As the self-storage industry continues to delve deeper into the world
of SEO, some confusion may arise. There’s simply so much conflicting
information out there that it’s easy to get it wrong; and getting it
wrong can mean disastrous consequences.
For example, a website can be hit by a manual penalty, which is
Google’s term for “we caught you doing something bad, and now you’ll be
punished.” The result can be an overnight complete drop-off in search
engine traffic.
Let’s just think about that for a second. If you mess up the SEO of
your site, you may risk losing all traffic from Google and other search
engines. For self-storage companies, this can be particularly
problematic because so much of our clientele finds us through our
listings.
And if you think you’ll be able to simply apologize to Google and
have the issue taken care of, think again. Manual penalties are very
difficult to remove. Google is renowned as one of the world’s least
communicative companies, and getting its attention will be frustrating,
to say the least. When it finally does respond to your begging, it’s
likely to give you some vague advice on what to do to, and then
disappear again into the void of the Internet.
What Is Good SEO?
Now that I’ve scared you, it’s time for the happy ending. If you’re
thinking about doing some SEO for your site, I do hope I haven’t put you
off of it. The truth is, done right, SEO can really help self-storage
businesses in the long run. These days, it primarily involves knowing
what Google and other search engines want and giving them lots of it.
Remember, a search engine’s primary goal is to give searchers the info
they’re looking for quickly. If those users are looking for something
like you, you want to make sure they get through every time.
No comments:
Post a Comment