The future of SEO and how to avoid being an SEO caveman

Too many businesses are stuck in the “caveman” days of search engine optimisation, according to David Pocock, manager of ROI Connect.  

At last week’s SocialBusiness conference, Pocock told the audience businesses had to evolve from an approach of “me want link good”. 

Pocock says SEO has moved on from content which is full of links but is not engaging or unique.

“No one wants to read that,” he says. “No one wants to remember you as that company they saw; it doesn’t build your brand.”

Instead, Pocock says it is best to think of SEO as a form of social media.  

“They are both about brand building; they are both about quality unique content; they are both about encouraging user engagement through your content; views, likes, shares, tweets and links,” he says.

“They are both relatively cheap to run and they are both fun and creative.”

Pocock suggests businesses focus on their quality content, the architecture of their website, ensuring there are user benefits, using images and videos along with linking in the form of “linking smart” and “internal linking”. 

One way of doing this is to create a blog for your business, a strategy ROI Connect has used to great effect with blog posts counting for 11 of the top 25 pages on its website.

“Our blog is basically built from questions our customers ask us and data we see in our analytics that customers are asking us, for example ‘What is SEO?’,” he says.

“[Our blog] drives so much more traffic to our website than we ever thought of,” Pocock says.

“It acquires new business and trust in the industry and we are seen as a thought leader.”

Pocock told the SocialBusiness conference a “reasonable amount” for an SME to pay for SEO is $400 to $450 a month.

“SEO is like putting clicks in your bank account because we are hoping that we grow them all the time,” he says.

In five years’ time, Pocock predicts SEO will be even more social.

“The [Google] Hummingbird update really valued the people who were putting the time into their content,” he says.

“[In five years] you may not be able to use Google or other search engines without logging in with your own personal details and you will get responses based on what your friends like and recommend.”