What’s the most effective SEO tactic in 2014? The folks at MarketingProfs.com recently asked that question, along with a few follow-ups, of their readers and the results provide a clear picture of the challenges faced by web publishers every day.
If you’ve been struggling with implementing your own SEO campaigns, the insights provided by MarketingProf’s readers could prove most helpful.
Content is Still King
“What are the most effective SEO tactics your company uses to achieve objectives?” That’s the million dollar question and the top answer is one that’s sure to warm hearts at a company called Google. A full 57% of respondents said that quality content was the best weapon in their SEO arsenal.
It should also come as no surprise that quality content was also mentioned by 47% of the respondents as being the most difficult SEO tactic to implement.
We’d have to agree on all counts here. For casino affiliates, especially those with limited resources, finding the time and money it takes to create a never-ending flow of high end content is incredibly challenging. At the same time, that’s where Google’s heading and everyone knows it.
If you’re unable to produce piles of content every day, you’re probably better off creating fewer pieces, but making them as evergreen as possible.
Keyword Research
Keyword research, that old SEO mainstay was mentioned by 47% of respondents as their most effective SEO tactic. That’s not too surprising and is, in fact, a bit reassuring.
Though Google’s made some aspects of keyword research a bit more difficult over the past few months, it’s still an incredibly powerful tool that’s available to anyone, no matter how big their operation happens to be.
When it came to difficulty, only 29% of the respondents listed keyword research as their biggest challenge.
Even better, search rankings by keyword and traffic/visits by keyword occupied two of the top slots in the results for “What’s the most effective SEO metric?”.
Keyword research isn’t a magic bullet, but it’s an indispensable tool when it comes both long range content planning and narrowing your niche.
Keep it Coming
One clear trend that emerges from the MarketingProf’s survey is that a never-ending stream of high end content is a pretty effective strategy for SEO success. But the survey also bears out the difficulty of executing that maneuver.
A full 37% of the people surveyed listed frequent updates as their most effective SEO tactic while 32% of them listed as the most difficult to execute. (Which put it in third place overall.)
Finally
The fact that content-related issues rate so high on importance and difficulty speaks volumes about today’s SEO landscape. Google’s push toward quality content has reduced the number of large scale SEO tactics available to any one publisher to practically nothing.
Unlike article directories, and other once-common-but-now-poison SEO tactics, content creation is a true time suck. But as difficult as it is to execute, it’s the one SEO strategy that your readers will both notice, and benefit from.