Google Search Algorithm Updates and How to Stay on Top
SEO (search engine optimization) is the web’s leading marketing solution. It involves manipulating Google’s algorithm in order to rank your website higher than that of your competition.
It is a highly technical area of marketing that requires years of study and practice. If it’s something you are interested in incorporating into your company’s marketing effort, then there are some things that you need to know.
This post will cover this topic in more detail, explaining how you can use SEO to your advantage, and how you can stay on top of your competition (in the search listings that is).
Professional Support
As mentioned in the introduction to this post, SEO is a highly technical area of marketing. It’s not something you can do without sufficient experience. Your best option is to find a local SEO agency to work with.
A professional agency will have the experience necessary to ensure your company’s SEO efforts are successful.
If you are planning on hiring an agency, then make sure that you read reviews. An agency’s reviews will tell you everything you need to know about them. The agency you hire needs to be experienced, qualified, and reputable.
Regular Content
Another effective strategy for increasing your site’s ranking is to post regular content. However, posting content on your website can be very time-consuming. Fortunately, you can hire a content writer and pay them to do it for you.
The content that you post on your site needs to be optimized for SEO, meaning it needs to include lots of keywords.
It should also be long-form content. Ensure the writer you hire is experienced in SEO content writing. SEO content writing is a discipline of its own. Ask to see any prospective writer’s portfolio before hiring them.
Updating Site
You need to keep your site updated. The biggest mistake you can make is allowing your site’s technology to get outdated. An outdated site is usually quite difficult for visitors to use, which will also make you look like you do not care about your site visitors. In addition to keeping technology updated,
you also need to make sure that content is updated and relevant. The content writer that you hire should be able to manage content updates for you. Make sure to write continuous updates into their contract with you.
Mobile Optimization
The vast majority of people who visit your site will do so on their mobile phones. Mobile phones are most people’s preferred method of browsing the internet. This is because they are a lot easier and more comfortable to use. If you do not optimize your site for mobile use, Google will not rank you highly.
Google only ever ranks websites that are optimized for mobile use. The biggest mistake you can make is not optimizing your site for mobile use, because you will alienate potential mobile customers and stop yourself from getting ranked by Google.
Targeted Keywords
In your content (and in other areas of your site) it’s important to use targeted keywords. The use of keywords will help significantly with your site’s SEO efforts. Keywords make you more visible on Google and the other major search engines. Keywords change on a regular basis, so you need to keep ahead of them.
There are online tools that you can use to see what the most popular keywords are in your niche. Make sure that you regularly check these tools so that you can see what’s most popular at the time you are creating or posting content.
Page Formatting
You need to ensure that each of your site’s pages is correctly formatted. You need to use different headers, i.e., h1, h2, and h3. The use of headers will help you to prioritize content. It’ll also give Google an idea about what the most important content on your page is.
If you are not going to be writing your own content then you need to make sure that you instruct the writer you hire to format articles properly. When you are first considering hiring them, get them to write out a practice paper for you. This will help you to gauge their level of experience and knowledge of SEO.
User Experience
The user experience of your site visitors is another important consideration that you need to make. If your website is hard for people to use, then it’ll probably be because your site hasn’t been optimized correctly.
A big part of site optimization is improving user experience. Google will not rank your site higher if there are obvious errors affecting your visitors’ experiences.
One way to prevent this from happening is to hire a professional website designer to build your website for you. Getting a web designer to build your site can help to prevent your visitors from having a bad experience on your website.
Link Building
Link building is something you need to invest as much money as you can into. If you do go ahead and hire an SEO agency to manage your site’s optimization for you, then they will no doubt handle link building. Link building involves getting your site’s URL featured in the content on other people’s sites.
Your site’s URL will be inserted into content along with the URLs of high DA sites, like the New York Times, for example. Link building is an extremely complex area of SEO, so if it’s something you’re interested in then reach out to an agency and ask for their support.
Buying Sponsorship
It can take a while before you start seeing results from SEO. If you’re in need of immediate results, then consider buying a sponsorship for your site. Getting your site sponsored on Google means you’ll appear right at the top of the search listings,
Whenever a search relevant to your page is made. It does need to be noted though, consumers know sponsorships are not organic and therefore are not indicative of a site’s authenticity or trustworthiness.
SEO is an effective way of improving your site’s ranking on search listings. The higher your page appears, the more traffic it’ll get. It is a highly technical area of marketing, as mentioned, and is therefore something you should leave to the professionals. If you do insist on doing it yourself though, then take the tips given here into consideration.
