Matt Cutts talks about one of the biggest misunderstandings in the SEO industry during a five minute video and talks about what SEO's should focus their efforts on.
If you don't have 5 minutes to watch the video below then a quick summary would be that SEO firms are still focussing too much of their time and energy on link building and understanding search engines, rather than focussing on the users themselves.
"stop thinking of search engines...and think of the users".
"Where do you see many SEO's spending too much energy on...or where do you see SEO's spending too much time or energy when they could be taking care of other things?"
3 Key Focusses:
1. SEO's confuse algorithm updates with data refreshes.
2. Panda and Penguin algorithms are not about making Google more money in the short term.
3. SEOs spend too much energy and time focused on link building and only thinking about search engines.
Matt suggests (encourages as Google does) to focus on:
User Experience
Website Design
Online Marketing / Social Media
People tend to look at SEO as 'how do I build more links?' SEO's are not thinking of the global picture. You need to change that mindset and think 'how do I make something compelling and how do I make sure I market it well' - stop thinking of search engines and think of the users.
Use social media and other online marketing tools to reach out and engage with users.
