What is SEO: Introducing the Mediavine Search Engine Optimization Series

What is SEO? A term that’s become ubiquitous over the past two decades, yet remains largely misunderstood.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of optimizing content to appear higher in search engine results pages, or SERPs. SEO involves selecting the right keywords, properly formatting content, making the best use of links and a little bit of technical knowledge.

More to the point:

Why does Mediavine, an advertising management company, place such a premium on Search Engine Optimization that we’re introducing a new series dedicated to it on our blog and YouTube channel? 

We’re calling it SEO Like A CEO: 

Why does an ad management company care about SEO?

Crazily enough, this was Mediavine’s area of expertise long before anyone reading this had ever heard of Mediavine.

We started in 2004 (!) as an internet marketing company providing SEO client work for hire. In 2006 we started The Hollywood Gossip, using our SEO skills to market and develop our own site, which became (and remains) one of the web’s biggest celebrity gossip blogs.

Mediavine would not exist without our flagship site and the SEO best practices that resulted in its organic growth. Long before we entered the ad industry, we built a sustainable business using many of the principles we believe can help you do the same.

What will the Mediavine SEO series cover?

The Mediavine SEO mantra that powers The Hollywood Gossip — and even the Mediavine corporate blog — is to focus on your own content, aided by big-picture advice Google provides, rather than obsessing over individual Google algorithm updates or advice by alleged SEO experts.

It’s a long-game strategy, and easier said than done, but it works so don’t give up.

We’re aware that many websites saw a drop in traffic after the recent BERT update and also due to what is happening in the world, but what you might not realize is that a lot of sites also gained traffic. SEO is ultimately a zero sum game that is constantly in flux.

You can’t control or predict the effects of the BERT update. What can you control? Researching the right keywords, writing terrific content and optimizing your website to meet Google’s standards. Over and over and over again.

Some algorithm changes might mean you’ll lose traffic, but you’ll likely gain it back with others, and over time, you’ll grow more often than not. What’s important to focus on is when Google’s advice changes, not what experts claim to glean from SERP changes.

That’s what this SEO series will focus on. Zooming out, writing good content and zeroing in on what Google says to do.

While content will be a strong emphasis of this series, certain more technical aspects of SEO will be covered as well. As you may have heard, we focus on things like pagespeed and Schema mark-up with our plugins such as Create and the Mediavine video player.

Technical SEO definitely matters, and we’ll cover it thoroughly to ensure you make the most of every opportunity available to you. But ultimately, technical SEO is the last 20% of this overall effort.

The more important component is the other 80%, and that’s your content. Making sure you’re writing the right content and presenting it in the best way to Google will make all the difference over time.

Our goal for the Mediavine search engine optimization series, SEO Like A CEO, is to cover all aspects of SEO in a piecemeal, easily digestible format. The first entry into our series teaches you how to write good anchor text, for example. 

That’s just one part of your overall linking strategy, but important enough to devote an entire segment to. We plan on breaking up our SEO series in this fashion to keep topics thorough, yet easy to read and actionable.

Where does Mediavine get its information from?

While 16 years of experience doesn’t hurt, every piece of advice we espouse really does come from Google. Everything Mediavine recommends will reference the Google SEO Starter Guide, the Webmaster Blog, or a direct quote by a Google employee such as John Mueller.

In short, it’s coming from Google and, secondarily, a decade and a half of experience in implementing Google’s guidance to prove what actually works.

We’re excited to help you grow your organic traffic — and with it, your business — together.