SEO in 2015 is com­plex. Opti­miz­ing for your audi­ence is a crit­i­cal first step of a suc­cess­ful SEO strat­e­gy, one that ensures peo­ple will find your brand or busi­ness on search engines and increas­es your over­all online vis­i­bil­i­ty. It’s also impor­tant to keep in mind and fol­low these five core SEO prin­ci­ples.

1. Every Brand, Website & SEO Strategy Is Unique

Of all the core prin­ci­ples this arti­cle will dis­cuss, this one is arguably the most impor­tant to grasp. Under­stand­ing this will save you end­less headaches and sor­rows.

If you believe all sites can be opti­mized based on the same set of rules, you will fail.

Wikipedia isn’t Buz­zFeed. Each site has dif­fer­ent tar­get audi­ences, objec­tives, con­tent types, user expe­ri­ences, and so on.

Where does this con­fu­sion come from? The fol­low­ing two ideas may seem to be in con­flict, but actu­al­ly, once you ful­ly under­stand they exist togeth­er, it cre­ates a per­fect envi­ron­ment to devel­op a smart SEO strat­e­gy:

1. Search engines oper­ate on an algo­rithm and that algo­rithm is the same for all sites.
2. Each site is unique and must be opti­mized around its own unique fea­tures.

Think­ing these two ideas can­not exist togeth­er is akin to say­ing that the laws of our nation apply the same to all, so all peo­ple must be exact­ly the same for the sys­tem to work. Since we have a wide range of unique indi­vid­u­als, from Stephen Hawk­ing (Wikipedia) to Kim Kar­dashi­an (Buz­zFeed), we know this isn’t the case.

The key here is to know that the algo­rithm is unbend­ing and uni­ver­sal, and your web­site is an indi­vid­ual with unique skills and abil­i­ties. You must think about ways you can max­i­mize your site’s pop­u­lar­i­ty with­in the con­text of the law (the search algo­rithm).

2. Content Is Critical

You need to view the con­tent of your site from two, often sep­a­rate, organ­ic search func­tions: con­tent that ranks and con­tent that earns links.

For exam­ple, let’s say you sell down­hill moun­tain bike equip­ment. Even the most avid down­hill bik­er isn’t like­ly to link to or social­ly share a page about a new shock.

And if a con­sumer did want to share that info, it would like­ly be a page on the man­u­fac­tur­er’s web­site, not a site sell­ing the shock. What might a con­sumer link to? Maybe some con­tent that explains how to get more air off a jump, or per­haps even how to select a shock. The lat­ter exam­ple hits both types of con­tent in one sce­nario.

When it comes to the con­tent we want to rank, it will be the prod­uct pages. But when it comes to con­tent to acquire links, we need to include infor­ma­tion­al pages.

Essen­tial­ly, you need to build good, sol­id resources on your site to attract links from relat­ed sites to make your site strong enough that you’ll rank for the con­ver­sion phras­es.

3. Technical SEO Matters

If you want search engines to rank your site, then you need that site to be in a for­mat they can eas­i­ly nav­i­gate and under­stand. You must fol­low all the search engine guide­lines and take advan­tage of all the capa­bil­i­ties.

Your site must:

• Be built prop­er­ly.
• Load quick­ly.
• Pri­or­i­tize con­tent.
• Address more tech­ni­cal con­sid­er­a­tions (e.g. serv­ing the site in HTTPS and includ­ing markup).

While these alone gen­er­al­ly aren’t mag­ic bul­lets to the top, they can make all the dif­fer­ence in tight com­pe­ti­tions.

SEO is as much about elim­i­nat­ing poten­tial issues as it is about cre­at­ing advan­tages. When the tech­ni­cal issues are addressed they no longer have to remain on the radar as poten­tial caus­es of rank­ing drops. This allows you to focus in on what remains.

Tech­ni­cal SEO isn’t as sexy as A/B test­ing or adding new con­tent because you’ll bare­ly notice any onsite changes or pos­i­tive effects. But when done right, tech­ni­cal SEO elim­i­nates so many poten­tial issues that could pre­vent con­sumers from dis­cov­er­ing you. This is invalu­able.

4. Your Website Need Links

Links are still good for your web­site. Why?

• Links increase the vis­i­bil­i­ty of your site.
• Links are used as a sig­nal by search engines to deter­mine the strength of your site.
• Google has inter­nal­ly run tests on their algo­rithm with­out links and it pro­duces infe­ri­or results.
• Unlike in years past, you can’t rely on spam (i.e., self-cre­at­ed or paid) links to achieve any long-term suc­cess. Now you actu­al­ly have to use your brain.

Link build­ing now requires finesse and an under­stand­ing of social media, con­tent devel­op­ment, research and ana­lyt­ics, and PR, among many oth­er hats.

But rest assured, if you want to rank you need to be con­stant­ly aware of what you’re offer­ing on your site. Make sure you’re offer­ing con­tent that oth­ers want to link to and ref­er­ence social­ly, even if it isn’t the con­tent that makes you much (if any) mon­ey.

5. Everything Is A Process Of Elimination

There are lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of var­i­ous sig­nals used to influ­ence search rank­ings. No one knows them all (prob­a­bly not even the folks at Google at this stage).

Fur­ther, the weight­ing of these sig­nals changes con­stant­ly. You have to elim­i­nate all pos­si­ble prob­lems and one-by-one deploy every pos­si­ble advan­tage.

Will this result in wast­ed ener­gies? Yes. Some issues are dif­fi­cult to address and don’t promise a high return.

Nonethe­less, poten­tial issues need to be elim­i­nat­ed (or at min­i­mum made note of so every­one is aware of the poten­tial prob­lem). Why?

What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

Let’s say, for exam­ple, your site hasn’t addressed its site speed. Sud­den­ly, you find your­self fail­ing to make any head­way up Page 1 for your main key­words.

Is it a site speed issue? Maybe, maybe not. Until you address the issue, you’ll nev­er know. But then you’ll have to play the wait­ing game to deter­mine results at a time when it’s poten­tial­ly cost­ing you rev­enue.

Giv­en this sce­nario there are two pos­si­ble out­comes:

• Site speed is the issue: Had it been addressed ear­li­er, the site would have been rank­ing high­er ear­li­er and mak­ing mon­ey faster.
• Site speed isn’t the issue: Had you addressed this ear­li­er, you would’ve known site speed was­n’t hold­ing the site back and you could have diag­nosed oth­er pos­si­ble issues.

Known Unknowns And Unknown Unknowns

Just because some­thing doesn’t mat­ter today doesn’t mean it won’t mat­ter tomor­row.

Let’s take mobile as the exam­ple here. We’ve known that Google has been push­ing brands and busi­ness­es to think more about the mobile user expe­ri­ence.

What if you had a site that, while not mobile-friend­ly, didn’t pro­vide a hor­ri­ble expe­ri­ence for mobile users, so you didn’t both­er fix­ing what didn’t seem worth the cost?

Well now you’re fac­ing a real sce­nario where a new mobile search index is being launched on April 21 specif­i­cal­ly for mobile. While we haven’t seen it yet, it’s like­ly that non-mobile sites will essen­tial­ly be invis­i­ble to searchers.

So if the bad expe­ri­ence of your mobile site has­n’t been addressed, now you’re faced with a sce­nario where you won’t rank on mobile at all and you’ll be try­ing to find a solu­tion at the same time as every­one else who also was pre­pared for the unknown.

What Can You Do Now?

What you need to do is list off every­thing that either is or may be a prob­lem, pri­or­i­tize them, and address them in a log­i­cal and coor­di­nat­ed way. To be sure, you’ll like­ly nev­er get to the end and if you do it’s sim­ply time to make a new list.

If, mag­i­cal­ly, you get to the end and have noth­ing left, look back to Prin­ci­ple 4 and think again about what types of links you don’t have or which of the ones you do might cause an issue and look to address­ing that.