It can be confusing when someone tells you that you had better take action to improve your SEO. When told this, many a business owner or executive nod blankly and turn away scratching their head.
While some of your SEO fate is up to Google and their oft changing algorithms, there is action you can take and exact duties you can incorporate into your weekly and monthly routines.
Is Content Still King?
There’s plenty of back and forth between SEO techs regarding the most important and influential aspect of improving your web presence in the eyes of Google and other search engines. One of the more common phrases that gets tossed around has been, “Content is KING!” While content is still vital and the core of your site, it’s not as all-encompassing as it once was.
Previously, many bloggers and SEO writers managed to game Google by performing the “content overload trick.” That meant by becoming a scribe you could sit down and write an encyclopedic amount of content and toss it up on your site. Hundreds of articles later, you then found yourself on page one of Google with loads of people flooding your online doors. After a few too many tried this, search engines learned the trick and programmed their digital machines to combat it. That doesn’t mean content isn’t kingly but in a game of thrones, the king doesn’t stay on top for long.
Content: Your First Order of Business
When you assess the value of a website, you can’t do so without considering content. If you have no content at all or low-quality garbage masquerading as content, no one will stick around for long.
What you have to keep in mind, though, is the purpose of your content and what it’s going to contribute. Your first order of business has to be along the lines of, “what commonly asked question am I answering or satisfying?” It could also be re-phrased as “what pain point am I relieving?”
By providing content on your site that adequately answer questions and relieves pain people may have regarding some topic (not physical pain, although if you are a medical site, that could work too), then you are doing people a service.
Google and other search engines are trying to push toward the top sites that will give the best service in that specific niche or genre.
Be Consistent
Circling back to the first mention of content above, you will be better off using a sure and steady method instead of using the “content dump tactic.” Post routinely as opposed to sporadically. If you are going to do one article a week, then try to do it once a week or every seven-ten days. Don’t post three times one week and then disappear for a month.
Originality Has It’s Place Too
One of the ways to shoot yourself straight to the bottom of a SERP is to copy and paste content of another. There’s nothing wrong with writing an article on a popular topic. This right here, as an example, is an article about SEO – one of the most talked about topics online.
The important thing is to make it your own. Don’t be lazy and search for an article on the topic you want to write about and then paraphrase what it says.
Write what you believe or what you have observed and say it in your own words. If some of them happen to match words of another, then so be it. The important thing is that what your write is your own.
Authority, Longevity & Trust
This isn’t a “one size fits all” scenario but more often than not, when you search for a subject or genre, you will see that the leaders who dominate page one are companies or brands with authority.
They have gained a position of trust and their content is regarded highly. People look for articles written by them or posts from their executives when considering something in that field.
Search engines make an attempt to rank sites based on a reflection from online users and their viewpoint of who the authority is. After all, these engines are trying to mirror what you believe in an attempt to provide you with those results.
Sometimes you might look at a results page and see a bunch of companies at the top of the page that seem anything but trustworthy. Or you type in the name of one place and an entirely different one pops up.
This is where you have to be observant and able to differentiate between organic and paid results.
Organic results are the ones that the search engines are ranking based on what authority, longevity and trust. Your SEO actions can have a direct effect on how you rank organically—that is, how you rank just based on what people are searching for.
When you see these other companies pop up at the top of the page that are entirely different from what you searched for or you have results that seem out of the blue, realize that these are paid results.
This means people have paid to have their site show up at the top. This is a service that Google provides. It’s called paid ads or PPC – pay per click. The company or owner of the site is paying Google to put their name on page one and each time their link is clicked, they are charged an advertisement fee.
The most effective campaigns and those companies that reach the top and succeed on line have aggressive organic SEO campaigns IN ADDITION to aggressive paid ad campaigns. With targeted actions that straddle both, you can work both ends of the spectrum and tackle short and long term strategies.
Organic is the tortoise. Paid is the hare. But in this case, both win.
MindCloud Can Help
In today’s online world, your content is often linked to external sites and online platforms. MindCloud offers a wide array of solutions for software integration. Being connected and well-integrated online will make your services more useful to others.
Contact us to find out how we can help.
