Now anyone who knows a little about SEO, knows the importance of keywords, Meta tags, inbound links, and AdWord campaigns.
You may know to notify Google about crawling new sites/landing pages you produce or you may constantly worry about your current page rank on the top search sites. You may have calls-to-action embedded in YouTube videos and your CPC campaigns may be an overwhelming success.
But what if all that went away?
What if content could stand alone?
What if the only promotion you ever needed was great content?
Insert Google+
Now any SEO professional worth his/her salt knows how essential it is to include trending keywords relating to their content in the body of a blog or a landing page.
This won’t go away, but after adding these keywords, finishing your blog, and formatting, we all know your job isn’t done.
Several steps now need to take place in order to promote the existence of your blog/landing page and the current content on it.
So how does Google+ remove all the added legwork?
Answer: Immediate Indexing
What used to take forever to move up the search channel, get crawled, and produced as relevant search results, is now instantly produced within Google+ relating to your public posts.
For a while, I couldn’t seem to figure out how individuals were finding my content on Google+ when they a) didn’t follow me, and b) the content wasn’t shared on alternative profiles. The difference was Google+’s search feature (better than Facebook).
Because Google+’s search feature immediately indexes any word in the body of your shared comment, #hashtags, etc. And thanks to the fact that Google+ has yet to allow promoted posts (thank god – you suck Twitter), the playing field remains level, and content remains king – for now.
Think Before You Status Update
The important part to recognize, is that this indexing really has more of an impact in the “share what’s new…” box (Google+’s status update box) – where your comments are published.
This is where your keywords should live and breathe.
With this in mind, promoting engaging/exciting content should be successful – regardless of your follower base.
Now all the added legwork, cost, and headaches over page position on search sites could go away regarding this new approach.
Creating cool content will become even more important – a good problem for consumers.
And Then There is Google.com
The future of this platform and methodology is beginning to grow as well. Starting with Google’s new “Search, plus Your World” feature, endorsed content on Google+, via Shares, +1’s, and comments, have a home on Google’s flagship product Google Search.
This change in search criteria will revolutionize the way content is seen.
Now companies with endless revenue streams utilized to monopolize CPC can fall back down to Earth, giving rise to where the battle should have always been fought: over cool content and its viewers.
Small businesses should rejoice and corporations should rethink online strategy, as the real winner is finally the customer. Now your social endorsements, +1’s, Shares, and Comments, can do what they were always meant to do: help customers make better decisions.
So wake up. SEO’s dead. And a new digital age is rising.