The reason for this is that the raison d’etre for search engines is to direct people towards the web page that is most useful to them. Step one for a website is therefore to provide this. Everything else is simply a way of highlighting it.

The process of drawing attention to your site and its pages will never be redundant, but if we look back over some older SEO tactics, we can see how redundant they now are. Think of keyword stuffed pages and ‘optimised’ page titles. These tactics worked for a short period of time, but they weren’t designed for users and they are now redundant. In contrast, good site architecture and unique content offer something of value to users and so these approaches aren’t likely to fall by the wayside.

Targeted search terms

The classic example would be a site that is targeting five or six key phrases and focuses on these to the detriment of all else. In reality, very few sites can boil their business down to such a small number of phrases. A well optimised site will gain traffic through a wide range of related search terms and focusing on just a handful so intently can be counterproductive.

Search terms offer little traffic

The other common error is to focus efforts on particular keywords or phrases, seeing their position in the search results as being the end result. If no-one searches using a particular term, it doesn’t matter whether you are first or 91st on Google’s results page, you aren’t going to receive any visitors. Not all search terms are equal.

Managed SEO campaigns can often be altogether too clinical. The quest for measurable results can lead to a situation where the SEO professional is chasing those targets at the expense of doing what is really needed, which is optimising the website so that it receives a lot of traffic from the search engines.

Targeting key phrases may seem like it could only ever be a good thing, but ultimately positive results can prove deceptive. A site that ranks well for four or five key phrases may seem strong, but if that is all the traffic that it is receiving, it is not actually well optimised.

If your site ranks well for the terms you are targeting, you might ask ‘why do I need more links?’ The answer is that you could be receiving visitors via a whole host of other search terms that are equally relevant to what you do.

As a test, write a blog post on your site offering some useful information about something related to what you do. A few days later, does it appear high up in search results for any credible search phrases? If not, your site probably needs more links.

Localised results

For a lot of searches, particularly business-related searches, results shown by Google are personalised according to locality. At the broadest level, results from google.com and google.co.uk will be different, but results within google.co.uk will also differ depending on your exact location.

If you search for cinema listings, Google will tailor results so that you see start times at cinemas near where you live. If you search for a plumber, the same applies and you are also likely to see different sponsored results as well, as these are also geo-targeted.

Personalised results

Are you signed into your Google account? Are you? This will make a massive difference to the results you see.

With this in mind, it makes sense to try and market your site through social media. But before you get carried away, stop and think whether it can really do anything for your site. Not every site lends itself to a Facebook or Twitter presence and unless you are very smart or very lucky, you may see little reward for your efforts.

If you sell products to a recognisable community, social media is for you. If you sell clothing or desirable high-end products, there is doubtless a particular subculture attached to your wares – perhaps even one that partly defines itself through its adoption of your offerings. If you offer a more functional, universally required service (e.g. plumbers, electricians) or a rather faceless product (pressure sensors, bags of cement) then however hard you try, you will never build up a social media following that will justify your efforts. The people simply aren’t there.