Optimizing your Website for Google
How to optimize your website for Google? If your business relies on Google to send web searchers to your site, some upcoming and recent Google changes may be cause for alarm. Google is redesigning the search experience in ways that could keep searchers inside the Google universe for longer while sending less traffic out to other sites. Keep reading and learn how to optimize your website for Google.
Why You Should Care About Google Algorithm Updates?
Google is constantly changing how it ranks websites. What was previously ‘best’ will be replaced by the ‘new best’ – and that always happens. Google has announced a number of updates to its algorithm before, and they have had a significant impact on the way people search, link, and rank sites. It doesn’t take much for these updates to affect your business; just a few changes in your site can quickly jump your ranking up or down.
The good news is that Google is not out to get you. The company wants to make sure that it’s giving users what they want in an easy-to-use way so they’re willing to put up with all the changes that come with the update cycle. This means it’s important for website owners to be ready for these updates, rather than sitting back and waiting until it’s too late to react.
With this update cycle specifically, now is the time to start learning how to optimize your website for Google – instead of later when they’re already being rolled out and you’ll have even more work (and confusion) on your hands. Below are some things you should consider when learning how to optimize your website for Google.
More Reliance on Artificial Intelligence
Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) capability, called MUM (which stands for Multitask Unified Model) will be playing a larger role in Google searches. You and your business will need to keep up. It’s more important now than ever to provide fluff-free information that answers searchers’ questions.
Search Results to Provide More Information
Google will be providing more information that answers searchers’ queries on the search result pages themselves. If searchers are satisfied with what they see on the search result page, they may feel less need to click out to other sites.
One way to deal with this is to make sure you are providing helpful and concise answers on your site to increase the odds that Google will select your content to show among the information it provides.
More Images
Google’s AI will enable more visual searches. Images will be more prominent throughout the page and will accompany many of the search results.
The problem for businesses is that because the images + text will take up more room than text alone, there will be fewer search results shown in the same amount of space. You may have to adapt what you are doing to help ensure your site ranks as high on the page as it did before.
Searchers Will Be Sent More Often to YouTube
Google owns YouTube, and part of what the upcoming changes will do is feature YouTube videos prominently on Google’s main results page. The AI system will go beyond finding specific moments in videos to finding topics inside videos that are related to the search query.
A study from HubSpot shows that video content was consumed by 66% of users across Google search results when looking to learn more about a brand or product.
To take advantage of this new trend, consider publishing regularly on YouTube.
While social media marketing is often focused on ads, as a referral-based business, you may not need to spend time and money on social media ads. Instead, you need to focus your social media marketing on simply getting in front of your target audience.
Opening a business page on Facebook or Instagram comes with a certain number of followers as a starting point. This is because the social media platform suggests to friends and family that they should like or follow your page when it is created. You can take advantage of this “built-in” audience simply by posting things on your social media page.
Google’s algorithm update has a large effect on small and medium websites, as it can change the rankings of their pages massively. If a website does not have many backlinks, does not have good content, or does not have any good search engine optimization (SEO) techniques implemented on the website, then Google might change its rankings from first to last place. From a long-term perspective, there is no such benefit to this.
Google rewards websites with good content and high-quality links. So if you want to improve your website’s ranking in Google, you must focus on these two points. Forget the old days when websites used to stuff keywords everywhere. If your content does not satisfy users’ needs, you likely won’t get it to rank on the first search engine results page.
Keyword Research and Tracking
To discover what users are looking for and have a benchmark to create relevant and attractive content, we recommend performing keyword research before writing your content. Once you know the top queries your target audience is typing, you can include those terms naturally across your web pages, such as in page titles, meta description, headers, URL, and along your content. Use a tracking tool such as Google search console to monitor the performance of your keywords across your site and make optimizations accordingly. Page Speed and Performance
How quickly your page loads has a direct impact in user experience. Ideally, you want your website to load in the first 2 to 5 seconds. Users might leave your page if it takes later than this, increasing your bounce rate and therefore damaging your web page ranking. You can improve your website’s loading speed by optimizing elements such as image files. You should also work alongside with a web developer to make sure your website is optimized for mobile devices and to fix any technical SEO issue.
As Google changes, you need to change with it. You should make sure that your site aligns well with Google’s goal of providing searchers with the best answers to their questions.
Beyond that, Google isn’t offering any blueprint to businesses about how they can adjust to the changes. It’s up to you to find out. Successfully adapting to the new google’s search results may require A/B testing and other techniques that will give you real-world data to guide your decision making.
A professional digital marketing agency can help. At RealTop, we have the experience and resources to help you discover how to optimize your website for Google and ensure you’re not being hurt by the updates but, instead, are poised to take advantage of them. Get your free marketing plan plan today!
If you could use some help developing digital marketing efforts so that your business does not rely mainly on a referral program, REALTOP is here for you. Contact us today and get a Free Marketing Plan to learn how to grow a referral business.
Best regards, Nik Tsoukales, CEO
Direct Line: 617-315-1138
Main Line: 617.741.9972
Skype: nikitastsoukales
Email: nik@realtop.com
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How do I keep up with Google algorithm changes?
There are many ways to keep up with Google’s algorithm changes, and it all depends on your situation and preferences. One way is to follow Google’s official blog and Google News. Another way is to set up a Google alert that will automatically generate an email based on Google’s latest algorithm changes. You can also follow other influencer blogs and platforms that cover Google-related topics and learn how to optimize your website for Google.
What are the 3 key ranking factors that Google uses in their algorithm?
The three key ranking factors Google’s algorithm takes into account to rank content are:
-Intent: your content should match users search intent. For example, if users are looking for “best practices to rank higher in search engines”, you want to make sure your are providing informational content to educate users. On the other hand, if users are looking for “PPC Services in Boston”, you should create commercial intent content that presents your business as a potential solution to users needs such as services pages.
-Authority: You will want to create an authoritative website and also ensure that people are linking to your site from high-quality websites. You can also increase your rankings with white hat SEO practices such as using keywords in important locations of your content, making sure that your website loads quickly, and ensuring that you have quality content on your website so people will want to come back.
-Relevance: This means being relevant to the search term, phrase, or keyword that the user is typing into Google. If you are a dentist and someone types in “dentist” into Google, your website needs to be relevant to the search term in order for your site to rank higher. You can do this by having keywords on your website such as “services” or “locations” so that if someone types in “dentist” or any variation of the word, their website will be relevant.
How does Google search algorithm work?
Google ranks websites that appear on the results page based on several factors. One of the most important is how relevant each website is to the user’s query. Adding relevant content to your site will help users find what they want. For example, if you have a website about beauty products, you could include content about particular beauty products that are popular among female consumers.
This content will help your site rank higher in Google search results as users begin their search for product information. You can also use general tricks to rank higher in Google, such as using keywords throughout your site’s content, including title tags and link text. Finally, ensure that your site’s overall design and layout are user-friendly and easy to navigate. This will help users find what they are looking for on your site, increasing your ranking in Google search results.
