With even a subtle tweak to their algorithm, Google can impact your site’s organic rankings. Read about best practices and what’s new with SEO.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about more than just making content search engine friendly; it’s about making good content search engine friendly. That’s why so many of the best practices of SEO are things that you would already be doing if you were writing good content. But don’t leave SEO, like the quality of your writing, up to chance. Create your content with intention!
What does SEO with intention look like? It looks like knowing your readers and providing them with content that’s going to keep them coming back for more. It means making your website mobile-friendly because the alternative is not even being ranked by Google. SEO is about making a long-term game plan that looks at the big picture instead of just sinking money into the priciest keywords, chasing short term gains. Do your research and be patient, because it’ll be between four to six months before you start seeing results!
Well-intentioned SEO sprinkles your text with some keywords but even more semantically linked keywords, terms that are associated with your keywords. That’s because search engines bounce text that looks like it’s being stuffed with a particular vocabulary. And for good reason: empty content doesn’t serve any readership, and certainly not any search engine users hoping to get valuable search results.
In fact, the best thing you can do is honor search engines rather than hope to manipulate them. And the best way to honor a search engine is by creating a website they would be proud to have among its top results. We, know, for example, that Google prioritizes accessible websites that load in three seconds or less that have a high click-thru rate (CTR), which is the measure of how much users explore your website (a high CTR is evidence that you’re providing visitors with a reason to spend more time on your site).
With analytics at your disposal and other sites as your inspiration, you can create a compelling experience for your visitors. You can go beyond where your competition stops, speak to demographics that are left out of the conversation, and make traditional shortcomings the basis for your greatest strengths! You can accomplish all this just by being smart about how you accomplish your goals.
SEO, however, isn’t a singular technique or approach; it’s holistic, multi-faceted, and varies from company to company. What’s your pay per click campaign? What’s your brand and how do you communicate it using social media and content? What are the latest tweaks that Google’s making to its search engine and how, if at all, has it been affecting your traffic? SEO requires regular assessment but not necessarily regular adjustment. Sometimes the best approach is to stay the course and not change what’s working!’
Thankfully for you, you have the collective experience of guides like Moving Traffic Media. We’ll keep you up to date with the latest changes while reminding you of the fundamentals that make every success possible in the first place. We believe in paying it forward because if you succeed that makes the internet a better place for all of us!
