Whenever Google updates its ranking algorithm, old SEO strategies that used to help may no longer be effective. In some cases, an SEO tactic that worked in the past may start to get penalized. Does this mean that all your SEO work might be out-of-date as soon as an update comes out?
Fortunately, there are a few things that have remained the same throughout Google’s history. These consistent facts are unlikely to change in the future. By implementing these elements into your SEO strategy, you can future-proof your efforts and ensure that none of your work is punished later on.
The key to putting together a future-proof SEO content strategy is to focus on the SEO best practices that have always been rewarded by Google throughout the years. Think about the user experience that Google is trying to deliver: they want users to find relevant and valuable information for whatever the user searches. So what’s the formula for success here? We’re not just writing valuable content for users, but we’re also delivering it in such a way that gets acknowledged by Google. We’re talking about great content written by humans that is organized on your site in a way that is easy for both users and bots to understand. This simple concept will always be important going forward.
Your SEO goal should be to understand what people are looking for and try to help them find it. In the end, high-quality SEO content written by humans is the best way to future-proof your SEO strategy. We want to focus on the behaviors the Google algorithm is designed to reward. That’s the safest strategy in terms of protecting your SEO efforts against potential changes to Google’s algorithm updates down the road.
Over the years, certain strategies like spammy link building and keyword stuffing have been created as a way to shortcut your way to the top of the SEO ladder. When it comes to future-proofing your strategy, remember that there are no shortcuts to SEO. The easy techniques or tricks that may work today will eventually get penalized by the Google algorithm.
Several updates have been released that have been focused on punishing the bad actors and rewarding the good ones. That’s why the best way to protect your SEO efforts is to not fall in love with these get-rich-quick tactics. Just because they may promise rapid results and may be very affordable doesn’t mean that they’ll always work. We recommend you follow this content strategy framework because it’s effective. Ask yourself a few simple questions:
By focusing your SEO efforts on answering these questions, you can build a solid plan that’s going to last you for the long term. If your content provides a good user experience for Google’s users, then your content will always perform well on their search engine. Google makes the rules when it comes to SEO, so think deeper about why certain SEO tactics exist. What behavior does Google want to reward? Keeping this in mind is how you ensure that everything you do for SEO will still work in the future.