For the past 17 years, QuinnCom has had a rather simple SEO philosophy which in its most basic form consists of three key components:

• Create great/unique content for your target audience


• Use clean and standard compliant markup to structure your pages correctly


• Take advantage of social media to help spread your content

With the recent change to the Google search algorithm, it looks like we've had it right all along.

At the end of February 2011, Google changed its search algorithm to eliminate low quality websites in its search results. "This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites - sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites - sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on." (Google blog)

A ranking on Google is tremendously beneficial to any business in any industry; a spot on the first page of Google can instantly make a website successful. It's no wonder that countless companies spent a ton of money and time doing everything possible to get on the first page of Google. The only problem is, they were doing it the incorrect way - putting the search algorithm above their user's best interest.

Most of these companies used "content farms" as a way to beat the algorithm and get a better ranking. "The term content farm is used to describe a company that employs large numbers of often freelance writers to generate large amounts of textual content which is specifically designed to satisfy algorithms for maximal retrieval by automated search engines." (Wikipedia)

The bottom line is that your users should always come first. If your website is developed properly and you consistently update it with good unique content, your users will continue to visit your website and search engines will take notice and give it a higher page rank.