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Search Love San Diego 2015 Recap | The SEO Golden Rule

Anyone working as an SEO, or in digital marketing in general, always has one eye on Google to see what changes are coming next. That’s why, when I had the opportunity to attend SearchLove 2015 in San Diego recently, I was particularly interested in the presentation by Distilled’s Tom Anthony, New Paradigms: 5 Fundamental Changes in Search. While all points were very interesting, the first one struck me as the most important – and universally applicable:

Align Yourself With Google’s Mission

Sometimes as digital marketers we frame our relationship with Google as adversarial, almost like we are working against the algorithm to achieve the business goals of our clients. And while it may seem obvious to some, I often get bogged down trying to guess and refine the best ways to deliver results for my clients. And that’s when the idea of working with Google really hit me: don’t fight them, because you’ll lose.

The best tidbits:

  • Give them everything! If Google is going to jack your content and put it right in the SERPs, go beyond crawlable & make your website easy for the bots to understand using markup (either JSON-LD or schema.org) & add data capabilities to your blog.
  • Figure out what makes you different –  you have to emphasize the things that Google doesn’t have in order to drive traffic to your website
  • Optimize for the knowledge boxes because you’d rather be there than your competitors – there are incentives to embrace Google’s approach!
  • Embrace mobile. People like mobile.Google likes mobile. Ipso facto, you need to like mobile.Mobile searches have surpassed desktop searches; are you willing to give up that segment? Just get mobile, ok?

You’re a real SEO, working for real clients and you want to put out the best content – and that’s all Google wants too. Focus on giving the best experiences to your clients and their target audiences. Yes, all of these things take more work, more effort to pull off successfully but in the end, when you align yourself with Google’s mission, you can make the algorithm work for you.