Organic SEO Services in 2022 and Beyond
Seattle “Organic SEO†(as it says in our brand name) primarily focuses on helping small to medium sized businesses rank in the organic or natural results of the top search engines in the our world. Since 2010, we’ve been helping companies leverage these “efficient opportunities.†Most companies don’t realize that improving the content and credibility signals Google and other search engines are looking for in their top results.
At the same time, the search engines are constantly evolving and adapting to consumer needs. As a result, the landscape is more complex than ever. For example, if you were searching for “personal injury lawyers†today, the search engine results page might look like this:
and this is just above the “fold” and on a desktop computer (Macbook, to be exact) in Chrome. All these variables might seem unimportant, but could very well be the majority or minority of your searches. For this one website, you can see that desktop should be #1 (in terms of focuses) and mobile is #2:
In terms of what it might look in the various browsers, this website owner should also focus on Chrome:
with a focus definitely on the iPhone, when examining the results focused on the mobile traffic:
Like these search engine results on an iPhone 6+:
scrolling down…
Whereas in the past, it was much simpler:
The Search Landscape is Incredibly Complex
While the overall criteria are relatively the same, the search engines make it very difficult to systematically determine what result should be placed over the other. Today, the top search property google uses many methods and computations to truly deliver you the most “relevant result” they deem the best for your searches. From factors based on speed to machine learning to the traditional factors like content and credibility, it is very challenging for our clients to easily perform organically like they used to circa April 2012 and before. After Penguin was released, the need for SEO’s grew even more.
Pigeon, Panda and Penguin: ComPPPlex Problems for Businesses
Google Pigeon (Possum?) = Local Results
Google Panda = Content thin penalty
Google Penguin = Spammy links
The name for the overall Google Search Algorithm, Hummingbird, includes many other sub-algorithms. If you’ve been keeping up with search engine news, you will have heard of Panda or Penguin andPigeon designed to improve local results. Maybe you’ve heard of Payday which is designed to fight spam or Top Heavy designed to demote ad-heavy pages, or Pirate designed to fight copyright infringement. We are definitely encouraging many to really think about Mobile Friendly designs to reward mobile-friendly pages since the world is turning to Mobile. It wouldn’t hurt to learn about RankBrain as well.
The days of the original algorithm being the sole criterion are over.
And if the past 15+ years are any indication of how complex the search world will be for the next 15, we truly recommend you hiring someone in-house or definitely keep up to date regularly:
We’re here to help you simplify SEO
As a result, we want to do everything we can to keep it simple. When we started in 2010, our #1 goal was simply to help and it is still today. Moving forward, let us be the ones who keep you up to date and ideally, keep you at the top of the searches in one way or another.