I read a lot of industry blogs and sites and PDFs and White Papers….I read a lot! I don’t believe everything I read and I am shocked by a lot of what I read. Not as shocked as I was when I heard Michael Jackson was dead, but I am getting off track…

In my opinion, besides God, Google basically runs the world. Without them we would be screwed. Many people use them daily for searches, but many more use their applications to run their businesses, find current news, shop, gmail and much more. Also, because Google has worked hard to give quality results to their users most of us know that if we need to find something we can find it on Google.

If Google Says “Do!”, I Do!

Because of my belief that Google runs a large portion of the world I am like an obediant child. If they say “do this”, I do it. If they say, “Don’t do this!” I don’t. I believe it is because of this that my sites and my clients sites are doing very well in the search engines. Would I worship a rock if they told me to? No…just their Web recommendations / guidelines.

Articles Say- “You don’t have to…”

In all my reading for the last 3-4 years I have read a lot of articles that make statements about how you don’t have to do something that Google recommends. Example, XML sitemaps. There was a large portion of the industry that said they were not necessary and not to worry about it. Well, I have a question…

If Google took the time and the great expense of creating a system where they request we submit an XML sitemap, and they also have this system be advanced enough to quickly tell you if you XML sitemap was done right or wrong, why would you ignore this request? I don’t think they made Webmaster Tools just for fun. I think it has a clear purpose for Google, whether we are fully aware or not. If they spend money on it then it must be important to them!

I read what everyone writes, but I don’t always agree. Doing what Google says to do works pretty darn well (and I am not butt-kissing here!).

The SEO Aware Philosophy

If Google says “do!” we do and we cover all the bases. We never know the exact formula that Google uses to determine what sites will do well and which won’t (making this simple, FYI). We are also aware that this formula changes, so why not do everything we can so when the formula changes we are covered?

By doing this and carefully planning out our SEO and marketing strategies we provide excellent service.

Just some random thoughts- Melissa – SEO Aware