When over 92% of global web traffic comes from Google’s online services and 53.3% of website visitors come from organic search, there is absolutely no question that your digital marketing strategy should gear efforts towards ranking better on Google Search.
But how hard is it to get a piece of that pie?
Google’s algorithm is updated hundreds of times at regular intervals, making it extremely difficult to find a formula that will not only suit your business and its needs but also last longer than a few months.
What’s even more challenging is that Google is very elusive when it comes to the actual technical specifications of how it works, so a lot of the conversation surrounding the topic is based exclusively on experience.
The good news is that some core principles have stayed the same over the years, creating a recipe that you can follow to improve your SEO results.
Make it easier for the Google Search algorithm
You have to understand that any search engine is just a crawler with a single objective: finding the answer to the user’s query.
Over the years, the process in which they do this has evolved greatly. Gone are the days where you could simply stuff your content with matching keywords, expecting sheer volume to generate results. Now, Google aims to show user’s search results that it finds genuinely helpful.
In general, there are three areas to consider when building your SEO efforts:
Holistically paying attention to these three things is crucial to getting on the first Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
Technical SEO
When we refer to technical SEO, we are referring to the overall performance of your website.
Think of it this way: if your website is slow, leads to a large volume of incorrect and broken links, or is unreadable on mobile devices, Google will assess that it’s a difficult and therefore undesirable experience for users, and will penalize your site.
There are a few metrics that you should be paying attention to using tools like Google’s very own PageSpeed Insights:
Much of this performance is affected by your assets, the way the site is built, the speed of your web hosting, and more.
Moreover, having disconnected web page URLs associated with your domain make it more difficult for Google to crawl through and index your site.
Technical SEO auditing is much like cleaning your house. Get rid of unused assets and improve the efficiency of your site by keeping the following things in mind:
On-page SEO
As the name suggests, ranking factors for on-page SEO have to do with the page itself. Not just in the content you use, but also in how you’ve structured the page from Google’s perspective.
While keyword targeting remains the primary driver of an effective SEO strategy, Google has become such a sophisticated platform that it will recognize and penalize you for abusive volumes of keywords that are not helpful to users.
The goal is quality content, something that users will actually appreciate and even use given their actual search intentions. If you’ve established a few keywords that you aim to target, try to incorporate them only where it makes sense and not just for the sake of using them.
When crafting your content strategy, consider the following tactics:
Aside from content, there are other on-page tactics you can use:
Off-page SEO
A crucial part of ranking involves building domain authority, a metric developed by software company Moz to assess whether or not your site is considered reputable and useful.
While it isn’t a part of Google’s actual algorithm, there is strong evidence to suggest that domain authority is heavily correlated with your search engine ranking.
Your content’s quality will definitely affect your authority as well as the keywords you use, but another factor that can’t be ignored is the quality of your backlinks.
Backlinks are off-site referrals coming from other web entities and indicate that your website is a reputable authority in certain fields. It’s much like the concept of word-of-mouth in traditional marketing, only it’s quantified by whether or not there is a hyperlink that leads to your domain.
Here are a few tips for building a link strategy:
SEO is a dish, not an ingredient
Rather than a single element within your digital marketing strategy, SEO is an entire recipe of ingredients that you need to constantly tweak along your journey toward boosting your organic reach.
You won’t see results by exclusively focusing on a few things, you’ll need to look at the bigger picture of your efforts and ensure that they are all working together to improve your ranking.