Dealing with the aftermath of the Google Jagger update

Okay, I know I’m not the first to announce this, but let’s face it guys and girls, SEO (search engine optimization), as we currently know, is dead. It’s time to ditch those antiquated techniques that all SEOs cling to and refocus your online marketing efforts.
‘online brand optimization’ – OBO for short!

So what is the difference between SEO and OBO?

Think of the browser, not the search engine!

From a strategic perspective, online brand optimization (OBO) is about optimizing your site and online marketing efforts for the searcher, the end user who is searching for your site through whatever medium they choose. Whether it’s through a search engine, a content portal, or even a forum. Your goal is to deliver what you promised and help that searcher to fulfill their goal online. If you don’t, you will have failed to achieve your key online goal.

Ranking’itis!

For most experienced optimizers, SEO is all about getting to the top of Google. The vast majority of SEOs become obsessed with checking their ranking in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) on a daily basis and even in every possible Google Data Center (DC). Checking rankings soon becomes an addiction for many SEOs and believe me, I know, I’ve been there. But I came to my senses and realized that there is more to life than being #1 on Google for a plethora of key phrases. I also realized that in today’s search environment you can’t trust the search engine to always give you targeted leads that convert.

You may have read about the multitude of search marketers who have recently been severely affected by Google’s ‘Jagger’ update. For many, their site has completely disappeared from the rankings, and as a result, they are now in an extremely vulnerable position. They only relied on Google to bring visitors to their site and no new prospects came; your business is beginning to feel the strain of being thrown into the harsh terrain I like to call the ‘Google Wilderness’. As we all know, no one ventures to page 127 of search results!

Build a brand (kinda obvious!)

So what can you do to help rectify this? The best solution for many of them will be to clean up their site, create compelling new content, get rid of any unrelated link partners, and focus their strategy on building a respected brand, not building top positions on search sites. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that good search engine visibility isn’t an important element of any online marketing campaign. I’m just saying you shouldn’t be the only one and you shouldn’t push their overall strategy, you should just support it.

For your organic search engine marketing efforts to work, they need to be intertwined with other non-search activities. Search engines like Google are complex beasts and they analyze your site in many different ways. They don’t just look at what content you have and who you link to, but there’s also evidence to suggest they measure other off-site factors, like how many mentions your site gets on other authority sites, how people interact with your site when they land on it. and so on.

The simple fact of the matter is that if you want to perform well on Google, you need to build a strong online brand and that means promoting your site using a multitude of online and offline channels, not just search. As I said, everything is interrelated and if you have a site with a strong brand behind it, it will make it to the top of Google.

Don’t banish yourself to the desert online

Building your business model around a search engine is very risky and not smart. Why? Because you have no control over the search engine. If you rely solely on the search engine to provide you with leads and customers, then you’re doing a lot worse than putting all your eggs in one basket: you’ll end up in an online wilderness with tumbleweeds blowing through your site. Remember that search engines don’t owe you anything; they don’t care how good your site looks. What they do care about is what their target audience thinks and we all know that weak brands never make it to the top.