The digital marketing industry has been on a constant rise for decades now. Exciting as it may be, search engine optimization is not an exact science, to say the least. Google, whom most digital marketers rely the most on, keeps changing its factors and algorithms, thus effecting websites’ position in the results.
Unless you follow these changes meticulously, you might miss an important factor or an algorithm. As a result, your website can drop several pages in the search results, bringing down the number of visits dramatically, not only in Queensland but across the world. Therefore, it is essential that you prepare your website for all future search engine algorithm changes.
Quality links will always matter
Each clicked linked is a digital ballot cast but they are not all equal. A link from a relevant source is more relevant than a link from a shady and untrustworthy source. Too many links from the latter source and you will start receiving ranking penalties.
There are other actions that should look to avoid if you want to keep your site clear of trouble. Google specifically states that buying links and/or participating in link schemes increases the chances of negative action against your site. Such networks are mainly built for the purpose of link spam, so be sure to give them a wide berth.
Google favours pages with a natural link profile. Websites with too many links using the exact same keyword as the anchor text increase their chances of getting penalized in the search results. Links to your pages ought to be a variety of both optimized and unoptimized anchor text.
Link exchanges are not benign as they might seem as other webmasters can prove difficult to work with. A page linking to thousands of other sites apart from yours will raise more than one red flag with Google’s staff.
How to link properly
Now that you know what not to do, here are a couple of strategies to build quality links to your pages. Firstly, you should create engaging content that comes with value. This way, you are more likely to attract links than if you used boring or bland content. Starting a company blog or posting unique content should be the first step to engage the target audience.
Using guest blogs involves submitting content to other blogs from the industry with a backlink to your own website. These links are incredibly potent, as they can increase awareness of your brand in a matter of weeks.
Linking your social profiles to the website is another smart move to stay one step ahead of changing algorithms. Social networks in the likening of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are excellent platforms to build a base of followers. Once you have enough people following you, simply insert links to various pages on your site.
Finally, you should look to build local citations. These are references for your company name, address, and phone number. If you run a business with a physical location (a brick and mortar store, e.g.), don’t forget to submit your site to local directories. My Business, ran by Google, is the ideal virtual address book you can start promoting your website on.
What quality content really is
We’ve mentioned earlier that original and good-quality content is going to be the driving motivation behind the success of your website. However, webmasters are often clueless about the true meaning of the phrase “quality content.”
Firstly, you need to be aware that visitors will quickly return to search results unless your content is engaging enough. When your site is cluttered with terrible and unreadable content, it is not set for Australian customers or it offers a poor user experience, all the pages on the website won’t rank well or at all.
A trait of quality content is the fact it is written for a specific audience. Simply writing for search engines is never a good idea because optimizing for keyword usage doesn’t produce readable content. However, every visit to your website is an actual person clicking a computer mouse who wants to find out something new and interesting. Only by engaging them in a senseful manner will you get them to return to your website.
All the content should be unique. If it’s simply rehashed, where is no real reason for your website to rank on the first page, is there? Content featured on your Australian site should offer something of value that users cannot found anywhere else. Duplicating content and aping other sources won’t get you far and you are likely to face penalization from Google.
The end goal of quality content is to increase visitor engagement. In this sense, agencies like GWM SEO Brisbane can help you increase the quality of your pages by adding relevant images and videos. In general, quality should always precede quantity in digital marketing.
Staying up to date with the changes
If there is one thing you can count on, then it’s the fact that Google will constantly update its ranking algorithm. For digital marketers, this means that practices that were effective will no longer be so, even after a couple of months.
Staying up to date with the changes is therefore essential. Luckily, Google will indicate what to expect for future updates. Mobile friendly updates are announced months in advance, providing marketers and business owners with plenty of time to optimize their web platforms for all devices.
Informative websites that share the latest SEO news should be bookmarked. You can subscribe to newsletters and various blogs to receive the latest info without the need to search the web on your own. Understanding which changes are next and making the necessary alteration to your SEO strategy will prepare your site for algorithm updates to come. Business owners often neglect this step and assume their sites will continue ranking as they did but this rarely occurs. Educating yourself on the latest updates gives your company a noticeable advantage in Google search results.
Onsite essentials
Staying up to date with changes means that you need to remember onsite essentials. Everything from speed to blog inclusion should be impeccable if you want to stay in the race for higher rankings.
The site’s speed is becoming an increasingly important factor in SEO. Users don’t want to sit in front of the screen for minutes before a screen opens, no matter how rich the content is. Google noticed that users don’t like to wait so it promotes sites with faster response times.
Our age is the age of the mobile. The majority of your visitors are likely to access the website through their smartphones. A mobile-friendly version of your website is a must because it will improve the overall customer experience.
The site’s structure should enable users to easily navigate through the website’s pages. All of the internal links should lead to active pages and repair all inactive pages so they redirect to relevant active pages.
Starting a blog on your website is slowly becoming a must in content marketing. However, many webmasters make the mistake of not updating the blog regularly. This causes Google to lower the site in rankings, so be sure to upload fresh content on the blog weekly.
Avoid posting spam at all cost.
We have discussed the importance of original content on your website. If you are struggling to come up with original content, that’s perfectly fine but what is not OK is spamming. Neither visitors nor Google looks kindly on spam. Dabbling with spam is the surest way to end up on the last page of search results.
Everything from a high number of links from low-quality websites, to too many paid links, is considered spam. Also, try to avoid a high number of links that come from the same website. The best way to tell you are spamming is when your site starts getting an unusual volume of links to your website.
Voice search is the next big thing
An increase in the number of mobile devices means more voice search. Mobile keyboards are difficult to use when their owners are on the move, as the keys are too tiny to type anything longer than 300 characters. Furthermore, some devices have no keyboard whatsoever.
As a result, speech recognition technology is constantly being updated. This modernization involves decreasing the number of mistakes so devices can recognize unintelligible speech, as well as different accents of English and different languages.
As a result, more and more people perform longer natural language queries, such as: “What is the distance between Perth and Sydney?” or “What’s the weather like in the Outback for the weekend?” Short, typed keyword queries are slowly going out of fashion and Google algorithms are adjusting to this new reality.
As mobile phones get smarter, natural language queries are becoming the new standard. Your website needs to conform to this standard by enabling users to perform a fast voice search. Be certain that Google will recognize this effort on your part.
Preparing your website for search engine algorithm updates is a tricky business but you should nevertheless engage in it. The reward of your effort is an SEO-optimized website that will rank higher than your competitors.
