Small Business, Google, and SEO: Can We Please Stop the Hand Wringing?

Send to Kindle

You know your world has changed when the latest update to Google’s search algorithm is breaking news on CNN.

Long story short, Google has released Knowledge Graph, the latest step toward it’s long awaited transition to something known as “latent semantic indexing“. The main gist of this change is that the search engine giant is getting smarter, and search engine results and indexing are now less about they key words that Google finds on your site, and more about the actual meaning behind those words; the context in which those words are found. Like every change at Google, the ultimate goal is for us, the end users, to find what we are looking for as quickly and as easily as possible.

And every time there’s a change in the way Google does things, from Panda to Penguin to Knowledge Graph, we wring our hands and worry about what it means to the SEO we’ve done on our sites. Just this morning I got an email newsletter from a marketer weighing in with his take on this. The gist was that while search is now easier, SEO is more difficult. He goes on to talk about using tags from Schema.org (you can read a good primer on Schema by John Trader over on Spin Sucks), and says that even with a computer science degree and years of experience, it took him two days, with the help of a developer, to add just a few tags to his blog. And then he wrings his hands some more, wondering what small businesses will do since they don’t have developers on staff to help them.

Guess what?

It doesn’t matter. At least not for most of us. So stop worrying.

The purpose of all of these changes at Google is to make search more real. Don’t worry so much about the tags and the SEO. Yes, search is changing, and for the better. But it isn’t making SEO harder. What it’s doing is making what we know as traditional SEO harder. In the long run, I believe it is actually making SEO easier. Just not in the way we’re accustomed.

Why?

Because now more than ever, it’s all about the content. It always has been, but seriously, just focus on creating good, relevant content on both your web pages and your blog. Focus on content that is important to your customers and relevant to what you do. All of that content has real SEO value that sticks. You don’t have to constantly tweak your blog posts as algorithms change. Most of you won’t have to hire someone just to do SEO if you’re creating this content. This is why I’m such a big proponent of business blogging. It does so much for you AND takes care of a lot of SEO tasks naturally.

Two people working two days to put tags on one blog post? How much good content could they have written during that time?

Just create great content and let Google do its thing. You might be surprised at the results.

How are you approaching the changes at Google? Do you worry about SEO or are you letting your content take care of that organically?

Related articles

• Google Launches Knowledge Graph To Provide Answers, Not Just Links (searchengineland.com)
• The Future of Search: An Interview with Google’s Sam Sebastian (contentmarketinginstitute.com)
• Where Do Your Conversations Take Place? (thecontentcocktail.com)
• Writing, the Marketing Cornerstone (v3im.com)
• The Case for Integrating Social into a Larger Marketing Mix (spinsucks.com)

Tagged as: blogging, Google, Knowledge Graph, Schema.org, search engine optimization, seo