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Well unless you were asleep over the last month you will be aware that Google has updated its algorithm for determining positioning of websites in its search engine. With Google still dominating the search engine market (they handle over 65% of all searches) this change is of great importance to all webmasters.

Their stated intention with the change of algorithm is to combat what are termed “content farms”. Content Farms are massive content sites that employ hundreds of freelance writers to churn out copious amounts of content purely to capture traffic and sell advertising. This is offensive to Google’s stated mission to provide the highest quality, most relevant results for people’s searches. The content farms offend this as their content is generally poor quality and often does not provide the information being sought or represented in the page titles and stated content.

But what does this mean to your average business website owner or webmaster endeavouring to market their site to the search engines? To be honest , not a lot! It has always been our advice to our clients to produce high quality, dynamic content in order to gain the best position possible within the search engines. This differs from just merely spewing content out on your website. The content must be original and must be ‘of use’ to the end reader. The reason why Google has so highly prized blog sites is because this is generally what is produced. Individuals or teams who are experts in their areas write and discuss a variety of industry topics which forms a valuable source of information and advice for searching web surfers.

“Is that all I need to do?” I hear you ask. No. The second important aspect of search engine marketing in 2011 is the creation of backlinks. Again, trying to arbitrarily and artificially create backlinks has been the undoing of many an impatient web owner. Google is alert and on top of ‘black hat’ backlinking activities and you will do more harm than good outsourcing to companies offering 5,000 backlinks for $500 in 5 days. The only safe and natural (which is what Google is looking for) way to generate backlinks is to:

• approach websites in the same area to discuss crosslinking opportunities;
• write and publish articles on the many article syndication websites available;
• be interesting in your content! That’s right! If you have good quality content people will find you and link to you without any further effort;
• visit and take part in related forums. Don’t Spam however!

We will touch on each of these items in future posts but this is good information to get you started on putting together your 2011 Search Engine Marketing plan.