What Google [May] Want You to Do

Black hat marketing techniques are a great way to piss Google off, and they usually won’t end well for your business. By playing by the rules and manifesting all the qualities of a great website, you can get Google to like you and increase your rankings. Sometimes the most effective thing you can do is also the most boring. Providing value to your customers over time and having Google’s bot observe this will result in massive increases of people who visit your site.

Content marketing has become a top marketing tactic in the last few years as companies have realised that the best, and usually cheapest, way to get customers interested in their business is to put out relevant content. Not only does quality content work wonders for these companies as they get their customers to trust them and their expertise, but it also enhances their SEO profile. Putting out relevant content is the top SEO strategy, and addressing this, 71% of companies are creating more content than last year.

Aside from content marketing, you can enhance the way Google reads your page by organising it better and showing improved “popularity”. One method for organising your site better is to use titles and meta descriptions that accurately label your content and show relevance to the keywords you are aiming for.

This ties in with effective keyword use since that is another great way to target your audience effectively. The keywords you choose to be listed under must be focused in on the message you are trying to send. Otherwise, Google will see your page as irrelevant to certain searches and not run your website well. Keyword planning is a skill that involves selecting the keywords that most fit your website and using them enough that Google’s bot will see the relevance.

Showing improved “popularity” is just finding ways to demonstrate that other websites find your content relevant as well. The top way to do this is by getting quality backlinks from other websites. This is essentially a vote of confidence from another website that your content is both relevant and of high quality, and Google likes to see this.

With those two methods alone, you can greatly increase your rankings, but there are also a lot of small tweaks you can make to improve how Google perceives you. For example, using good quality images shows a level of care and investment in your content that Google likes to see. User enjoyment increases when the photos aren’t pixelated and load quickly, so take the time to plan out your website to meet these guidelines.

The final trick you can use is standards compliant HTML code. This goes back to what I was saying about organising your website. You want the website to show that you are effective at what you do and have invested time in making sure that things are well-run. You are demonstrating professionalism at the same time as you make it easier for Google to interface with your website.

Google is such a dominant player on the Internet that you will be effectively designing your entire website around their needs and guidelines. This may feel silly, but in this day and age, it is the only way to do business. Google isn’t going away anytime soon and being ranked well by them can mean the difference between success and failure, so be ready to play their game.

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