When it comes to optimising your website for internet search engines, Google continues to be somewhat of a conundrum. It’s unlikely that anyone other than the Google masterminds themselves could ever fully grasp the complexities of the system (and if they did, there’d be a whole new one developing at the same time). But there are still plenty of things that have been discovered, and that ultimately could see your website rocket into one of Google’s top spots.
From Spiders1 to Pandas2, there are plenty of ways that Google distinguishes a high-quality site from a low-quality one. In essence, Google looks for regularly updated, new, unique, relevant and interesting content.
No longer is it enough to simply scatter a few keywords here and there in your copy. How often do you type a one or two-word search into Google these days? Rather than a simple ‘writer’ you’ll be searching for ‘writer with technical experience based in London’. It’s time your web copy started catering for the long tail search.
What’s more, you need to make sure you’re totally tuned in to what your audience might search for. ‘Motor insurance’ or ‘Car insurance’? A large insurance company changed their web copy to the latter and found its website flying six places higher on Google’s rankings over night.
It’s not just about your content either…. Google loves popular sites. If plenty of other sites are linking to you and therefore liking your content, it’s another sign that your site is trustworthy and relevant, and another reason for Google to help you climb higher on their search results.
There are plenty of simple yet smart ways to adhere to Google’s criteria, and with search engines fast becoming the go-to for all information, there’s no reason why your company shouldn’t be making the most of them. From strategies as small as changing one or two common words to writing a daily blog – the difference can be startling.
1 Google ‘spiders’ crawl the web, visiting millions of web pages to find new and updated content as well as ‘dead’ pages. They are directed by computers using Google’s algorithm.
2 The Panda Algorithm was developed by Google and is still a mystery, but this web page will help explain what is known about it so far.
