Major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing all want your website to be an honest and authentic representation of your business. In fact, they always wanted this, but it has been profitable, for some businesses, to forget this in favour of trying to ‘game’ the system, with strategies such as link-buying and over-optimised pages.
As such practices are identified and outlawed by Google, there is a seismic shift towards carefully crafted content which engages customers and your PR resource is best placed to generate these stories.
Here are six tips to keep Google and your website visitors happy:
Don’t write similar or the same content over and over
Content heavy websites publish content around the same or similar subjects without adding any value to the reader. It is possible that Google and other search engines may devalue some of the other pages and only focus on which page it thinks provides the best content surrounding that keyword / phrase or search query.
Focus on users rather than keywords
Poor websites will create content based around keywords and have no real value other than to rank for that particular keyword. Websites that will stand the test of time create interesting content for users, solve problems and offer solutions.
Help your reader
Explain what makes your product different, give the users tips on buying, show deals, compare prices, collate reviews, give step by step guides – help the buyer make a decision or solve a problem.
Include other forms of content
With the popularity of video content rising, websites today can leverage a user advantage by producing videos and then having those videos transcribed into text to also provide value to search engine robots. Furthermore, uploading a video to YouTube or Facebook gives you the possibility of generating alternative traffic and widening your audience.
Create ‘non-profit’ content
Expand the customer engagement beyond the commercial transaction. Create pages and content that are useful for your niche/industry. This could be in the form of an infographic or evergreen guide. These will serve as content assets and may attract links or get shared, therefore increasing the authority and traffic of your site as a whole. This ‘non-profit’ content will also help with the commercial balance of your website – as search engines will see that not all of your content has a sales agenda.
Create a social following
Any website will naturally want to form a following on social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Work on building a social following and attract real people and ‘likes’ by sharing valuable content in your niche. You could also start a newsletter and share value there. This also decreases your reliability on search should you ever experience any fluctuations.
If you need help with your online presence get in touch with SRF to see how we can help.