The world of SEO is always changing, always adapting to the latest technology and pushing web searches to new levels of quality. Google rolls out increasingly complex algorithms on a regular basis, and while you don’t necessarily have to understand the mechanics, you should understand the bottom line for your SEO campaign.
One of the most important elements of new SEO updates deals with natural language detection—essentially, technology that is able to determine whether a piece of web content has been naturally written or contrived to try and build rankings.
Old Tricks
This new natural language detection technology evolved from a motivation to weed out some of the black hat tricks that plagued older iterations of the Internet. Some of these included rudimentary techniques, like writing content with the same keyword used over and over again. As updates became more advanced, SEO campaigners began outsourcing writing to third world countries—circumventing the SEO updates, but still saving money and ultimately, producing hard-to-read, nonsensical content.
Natural Language Processing
Natural language processing (NLP) itself is a technology that can be traced back to as far as the 1950s. It’s easy for a native speaker to determine whether a piece of content was written by a natural speaker of the language, but writing scripts for a machine to make that determination is incredibly complex. Still, search engines are relying more and more on the increasingly sophisticated processes that are allowing an automated detection of non-naturally written content.
What it Means for the Future
It doesn’t matter if you’re a great writer or an okay writer—if you speak English and wrote the content yourself, Google will not be penalizing you. However, if you practice keyword stuffing or outsource all your writing to non-native speakers, it would be wise to adjust your strategy before Google brings down the blacklist hammer.
Work with an American company who hires quality English-speaking writers. Cheaper solutions might work in the short-term, but if you’re investing in a long-term strategy, you need to equip yourself with the highest quality writers.
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