The two biggest ways to get new traffic to your site are SEO and word of mouth (social media). Which traffic is better is debatable. I’ve read many sources that say search engine traffic converts better because the visitor was already searching for something specific whereas social media is usually not as targeted.
Regardless, search engines will likely send you the most long term traffic and definitely the most passive traffic of any source. I had to take a 6 week break from blogging, but I still continued to receive search engine traffic.
We’ve all read the standard SEO tips before. Get backlinks, using h(x) tags, keyword density without overstuffing, etc… The fact of the matter is, none of use statistical evidence to cite our beliefs.
SEOmoz, self proclaimed “Best SEO Resource,” published some statistic recording the correlation between the ever popular inbound links, h(x) tags, URL keyword stuffing, etc… This article has made me question what I’ve read about SEO.
According to SEOmoz statistics, total number of inbound links does not necessarily lead a better SERP. Nor does keywords in titles. Nor does the use of h(x) tags. All things that are regularly preached by the majority of bloggers including yours truly.
What SEOmoz does claim works is tagging your images. I can verify this based on my 6 week absence. WP Stats records the search term people use to find your page even if it is an image. Google Analytics does not include stats on image searches (as far as I can tell). Based on these numbers, around half my search engine traffic comes from tagged images.
So does this mean the practices we’ve been told to use are all lies? Nope.
While their charts seem impressive, we already know that no single method alone can be used to improve our SERP. A recent article from SEO Book does a great job of pointing out that SEO is as much art as science.
The take away message from all this to me is simple. While all those great tips like building links and writing keyword relevant titles might not get you the top rank alone, but even if they don’t have a perfect relation, they probably do help. Sooner or later you’ll get there. And oh yeah, don’t forget to label your images!
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First, welcome back!
Anyway, as a practitioner for over a decade, I can surely attest that SEO is both an art and a science. Tactics that work today may be diminished tomorrow. Therefore, I believe in creating a sound foundation.
Just doing basics like updating content, using titles, headings and anchor text, creating deep links, having a great site structure, using organic keywords, and tagging images consistently can do wonders for a site in the long run.
Taking my time off gave me a really interesting view of how SEO works and what sends search engine traffic. I was actually very surprised at the level of traffic my site maintained simply from search engine traffic since prior to my leave, almost all my traffic came from Twitter.
The biggest thing it taught me is exactly what you said: use good practice and keep building content. I think keyword stuffing or trying to rush to the top is a mistake.
Things are constantly changing to replicate human behavior. Write content humans will find useful and it’ll pay off.
Welcome back, Blake. I was starting to get worried :P When I check out Google Analytics, one of the top referrers is frequently Google Images. I was actually surprised when I found out that a lot of bloggers don’t bother tagging their pictures.
Yeah, I can’t believe how few people seem to tag their photos. It’s really easy and quick to do, and the results are amazing.
The amount of traffic I get from images is way higher than I would have expected.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Blake Waddill and Blake Waddill, Blake Waddill. Blake Waddill said: RT @PropsBlog: Everything You Thought You Knew About SEO Is Wrong – http://shar.es/aFzjx [...]
It is so true that SEO is an art. I experience that my feeling righter then my thought in seo thing.
I’m still confused with the workings of SEO but I put little effort on it. I put much effort on the social media because it’s much more predictable. :-)
I couldn’t agree more Walter! SEO seems to just be so intangible. You can make all the changes everyone claims you should make, but in the end, it seems like traffic, size, and age trump other factors.
With Twitter starting to show up in search results, I think optimizing search engine potential via social media is going to be huge.
Post titles are going to be that much more important for search engine results since most RTs are based on the title of the post… I’m interested to see where this all takes us.
I wrote a few articles on how image SEO. I need to review them, and update my images. I’ve been slacking on that stuff.
Another thing I’ve been slacking on is keywords. Google says they don’t use them. Maybe they don’t. Today. But they might tomorrow, and not say a word about it.
SEO is something broad and noone knows what exactly it is as it can be changed anytime the algorithm change. However, I love reading SEO analysis articles but our brain sometimes is rather important than SEO :-)
Thanks for very interesting post! I think that SEO is an art but it’s very interesting.
In the past i discover something, i only received google image search trafics when google penalized my old blog.
Only traffics from google image is what i had.