Search Engine Optimization is a proven and powerful method of driving a large amount of traffic to any website on the Internet. Kansas City SEO 2013 strategies, like new SEO strategies throughout the world, focus on driving traffic from the search engine results pages, or the “SERPs”, and when traffic is delivered to a website by visitors searching for a related keyword phrase, the traffic can be very targeted with a very high conversion rate.
Caffeine
One of the Google algorithm updates that had a significant effect on the SERPs was Caffeine. Caffeine came before Panda and Penguin, and this Google update was specifically designed to help the search engines deliver high quality results much more quickly than before.
As a result of Caffeine, results that were in the index were being delivered in real-time, and this had an extremely positive effect on search results overall. Now, people using the search engines can get the most up to date and pertinent information quickly; and for some keyword phrases, people that are using the search engines will receive the latest results.
The Penguin And Panda Updates
The Google algorithm updates known as Penguin and Panda had a huge effect on strategies and techniques for raising the rankings of a website in the SERPs and making websites more authoritative. With its algorithm updates, Google wanted to significantly improve and increase the rankings of high quality websites with a large amount of high quality content, and Google wanted to lower the rankings of websites that had little content and few high quality backlinks.
When these particular Google algorithm updates were released, many websites dropped in the rankings, and many websites rose in the rankings significantly. As a result of these algorithm updates, search engine optimization was forever changed.
Now, the best strategies for ranking high in the search engines always focus on high quality and unique content, along with high quality backlinks and websites that have a lot of value for their visitors.
Low Quality Websites
Low quality or ‘thin’ websites were hit hard by the Penguin and Panda updates, and many of the rankings of low quality websites dropped significantly or were removed from the index completely.
The reason for this is quite simple, yet it is tied to a practice that had become much too common. Many website owners were building very small and low quality websites, and simply generating huge numbers of very low quality backlinks by submitting hundreds of articles, putting backlinks in forum posts and other methods of gaining many low quality backlinks.
This was allowing low quality websites that offered little real value and hardly any important information to rise to the top of the SERPs or near the top of SERPs.
Successful Strategies in 2013
The first thing that a website owner should do in order to rank their websites high in the SERPs in 2013 is design high quality websites with high quality content. Next, a website owner should focus on establishing high quality backlinks. Backlinks from content farms or other low quality sources no longer provide much authority or link juice.
A website owner should also focus on establishing relevant backlinks. Google is placing a lot more emphasis on backlinks that are on webpages that are relevant to the subject matter and to the content of the website, and highly relevant backlinks can give a website a lot of authority as well as significantly raising its rankings.
Local Search
Local search is rising in popularity, and many websites in lots of different niches can generate a huge flood of traffic from the search engines by focusing on local keyword phrases. In 2013, it is projected that local search will become even more common due to the huge number of people that are searching for keyword phrases from their mobile devices.
By focusing on local search, such as search results in Kansas City and the surrounding area, a website could gain a significant amount of new traffic with less competition for the keyword phrases in the SERPs than it would likely have for international keyword phrases.
