Marketers can sometimes feel as if they are caught in the midst of a tug-of-war between Google and the real-life searchers who actually buy products and services. That’s because maintaining high search visibility used to involve stuffing pages with repetitive keywords in terms, creating redundant links, or taking other steps to make sure a page could stand out to automated search spiders.
That’s not true anymore, however. Now it’s possible to optimize your website for Google and your customers all at once. To do so, you just have to follow a handful of simple guidelines…
Use Fresh, Engaging Content
Cramming extra search terms into your webpages won’t help you on Google any longer. If anything, it will work against you, since an abnormally high keyword density will trigger alarms and filters that prevent you from being listed in the search engine results at all. So rather than overloading your pages with repetitive phrases, focus on sharing new, interesting, and unique ideas that appeal directly to your readers. Do that, and the search aspect will take care of itself.
Follow a Smart Linking Strategy
In the same way, marketers used to have to attract (or manufacture) lots of links to their sites. However, Google now ignores most links, preferring to emphasize the handful that come from reputable destinations within the same industry. That means you should pursue inbound links like you would real-life partnerships, evaluating them to see whether they help or hurt your credibility. Likewise, you can use outbound links (in the form of citations and resources) to make your website more authoritative to search engines and useful for guests.
Emphasize Speed, Accessibility, and Reliability
Google is concerned now more than ever before, with giving searchers a positive user experience. Not surprisingly, that is something actual users tend to prefer, as well. So, if you can make your website faster and easier to navigate, you’ll see better results with both audiences. Opt for premium hosting if you can afford it for your website, and make your navigational structure easy to use. You’ll get more searchers that way, and turn more of them into customers.
Keep Visitors Reading and Clicking
When someone who visits your website from a search engine hangs around and reads your pages, they are more likely to buy something (not to mention returning later). They are also helping you to get more search traffic. That’s because Google has made user engagement a new search signal. So, the longer someone spends on your site, the more pages they view, and the more often they return, the higher ranking you’ll get. That means more visitors in the future, and so on and on for months or years to come.
Until recently, you had to walk a fine line between optimizing your site for search and setting it up for conversions. Generally, that meant some uncomfortable compromises, because you couldn’t win customers without stuffing in lots of unnatural keywords and links first. These days, however, what’s good for Google is good for buyers and vice versa. So, if you’re ready to leave the old SEO strategies behind, call or email our team today and see how we can help!