SEO Agencies

Everyone’s talking about the social media revolution. It’s a runaway train. Twitter this, Facebook that, LinkedIn the other. And yes. It makes sense. With Google and Bing applying ever increasing weight to social signals within their algorithms and even integrating social features into universal search returns, any SEO professional worth their salt would be crazy not to be paying close and careful attention to social search as an important component of their overall search engine optimisation strategies.

In the same way that high quality content marketing is now diverting resources from web development and design, so too is social search. In the context of recent announcements such as the Scraper and Farmer updates and the initiatives to promote social influence in search returns, this makes perfect sense. The danger though, is that as SEO agencies and professionals start to focus off page, corners might be cut when it comes to building strong, sustainable web sites. Websites that act as a solid foundation for your SEO and adopt the tried and tested common sense practices that have served SEO professionals well over the years.

However ambitious you are to embrace social media marketing, social search and content marketing (and you should be ambitious as they’re increasingly powerful parts of the SEO mix), don’t build your house on sand. The fundamentals of on-site SEO haven’t gone anywhere and despite the social hoopla out there, they still need to be applied as robustly as ever.

What should you be looking for? What constitutes essential best in practice web design and development that will support and complement your SEO efforts?

We’re talking anything that might impact on SEO performance. From coding (keep it clean, lean and lightweight), site architecture, meta tags, internal links and anchor text, navigation, user experience and spider blocks.

Why rush off in a social whirl inviting the good, the bad, the average and the unique back to your place when the paint is still wet? Visitors can be unforgiving and won’t be inclined to return. Get it right at the start. Build your house on rock, not sand. Both Google and your audience will appreciate the effort over the long run.

For more information about what you can do to ensure your website is truly fit for purpose talk with an SEO professional.