Recently, I had an interesting exchange on a forum about search engine optimization.
A beginner asked the following question:
“How can I get Google to visit my pages more often, given that I regularly release new products and, because of seasonality, I can’t wait 15 days for the Google bot to eventually come by.”
For my part, I suggested systematically featuring new pages on the site’s homepage and syndicating the content on a Wikio-type aggregator or other product catalogs, given that the meta revisit-after tag was no longer taken into account by search engines. This strategy has proven itself: for example, on a store like lampe thellia, it makes it possible to index pages for new products in just a few hours.
You just have to read the Google docs to get indexed
One of the forum members, Didier, stated that external links had no influence on the page indexing frequency, and that simply reading Google’s “docs” made it clear that all you had to do was create a nice, up-to-date XML sitemap file. He essentially added that it was because of the nasty “SEO specialists,” who wanted to manipulate Google, that meta tags were no longer taken into account today.
I should point out in passing that I agree with Didier on the essentials: he emphasizes content and compliance with the rules, which are also my main concerns.
SEO experience makes the difference
The fact remains that Google is not software like any other, and believing that you can simply follow the site’s design rules properly (that is to say, focus on yourself) and that this is enough to ensure optimal visibility in search engines means forgetting one of the pillars of how Google works: if a high-quality site links to my site, that link is considered a vote and should theoretically improve my ranking. And there, you can search through Google’s “docs” all you want, nobody knows the exact details of how it works. In this field, you can count on only two things: experience and practice. Your own, and that of the thousands of internet users who try every day to win the endless battle of competition on the Internet, and believe me, it’s a profession.
SEO: difficult marketing
I would just like to conclude this post by saying that it is unfair to blindly attack “SEO specialists.” Internet SEO is marketing, and in the most competitive environment there is. If you make a commercial, you can always choose to entrust its production to a guy who knows the camera manual perfectly. But finding a good screenwriter and an experienced director will be far more effective. The same goes for choosing channels: a good film that you show on your store screen will delight your friends, but it has little chance of making your products or services known to the whole world. On the Internet, it’s the same.
