I’m a big fan of mechanical search engine optimization. Why not? If you use decent practices and make your website highly spiderable, many of the pages will end up accessible via Google search. That means free traffic. But in the last few years, mechanical SEO has become necessary, but less effective.
Google spends a lot of time these days weighing domains for their relative merits, and not just ranking the internet on a per page basis like they used to. A few years back it was relatively easy, okay, I mean really easy, to get pages to rank for long tail search based on good mechanical SEO techniques. Now it’s not quite so easy. Certainly part of the reason is your competitors are wise to the effects, and most popular content management systems are built on solid SEO fundamentals.
Now mechanical SEO is a given. It’s something you must do. But you won’t suddenly be number one just because you’ve taken the time to built your website in an SEO-friendly manner. That’s just the beginning.
Once you’ve handle the basics, the rest of your job is making your website attractive to visitors and other webmasters who might link to you. You do this my specializing in something, or by offering something other websites don’t have.
Failing that, you can make sure you execute at a high level and produce really outstanding content. It’s tougher than ever in a very crowded field these days, but with the right mindset and proper practices, you can create lasting content that stands out from the crowd.
If your website passes muster with the masses, you’ll end up getting the kinds of links you need that establish your reputation online. Once your trust is established, and your mechanical SEO is without peer, you’ll see the strong results that you once thought reserved for others.