It’s crucial to understand how vital SEO is to any online marketing strategy. Unfortunately, it’s also necessary to grasp that utilizing SEO requires a rather large amount of guesswork. Because of the many unknowns—the largest being the secret nature of the formulas used by the major search engines to determine ranking—it seems a fair amount of speculation will always be the reality.
Each of the three major search engines—Google, Bing and Yahoo—operates with different parameters and each has its own formula known as an “algorithm”. Google—with six times the number of users—prides itself on the complex nature of its search engine and closely guards page-ranking secrets.
But rather than focus on the frustration of the unknown, concentrate on what is known about driving traffic to your website with SEO.
1.Google admittedly is looking for high-quality, relevant information to answer a searcher’s query.
2.Search engines scope out relevance by “crawling” (or reading) websites’ content and evaluating—through their complex, secretive, often-tweaked algorithms—just how relevant and usable the info will be, mostly based on the keywords.
3.“Quality” is determined by many factors but “backlinks” are becoming a foundational part of many search engines formulas. The number and quality of other websites that link to a particular page and the site as a whole are key. It’s like this: if the personalized, custom-printed mouse pads website is linked one-way, not in a link exchange, to big-name, trusted websites, which will be noticed by search engine “crawlers.” However, don’t stoop to paying for links because that could get you into hot water and result in penalties.
4.Clear, concise content that articulates the topic in the title and carries the theme throughout the content, stands a greater chance of being found and properly sorted into the databases of any of the search engines’ systems.
Additional elements being weighed by the ever-evolving algorithms include:
1.Do searchers actually click on your site? Do they visit several pages while there?
2.Mobile friendliness is big these days. How well does your site look and perform on a mobile device?
3.How much content is unique versus re-posted?
There are hundreds of ranking factors tucked inside these algorithms that are in a constant state of being refined and updated as search engine administrators seek to ensure internet users will get the most helpful results regardless of what they’re looking for. The ultimate goal is to provide searchers with the most relevant, useful search results possible. Keeping that in mind will give your website the best chance of achieving a high ranking.
If you are not being found on Google, you are losing business to your competitors who are being found and converting those leads. Let ASJ Partners help you be found more, covert more, grow more, win more with our variety of Google Services. Contact us today.
