Google’s ideal world is one where a user types a search and the pages that are returned are exactly what the user was looking for. In a quest to achieve this perfect search, Google is constantly working on the criteria that decide on how sites and pages are ranked. Of course the quest for us as marketers is to get our pages to be listed on page one of Google for keywords and phrases relevant to our audience.
In the latest changes to the way it ranks sites Google has come out in favour of quality sites with relevant content.
The key elements to getting it right with Google are now focussed around prioritising the visitors to the site, rather than trying to rank highly in search by using SEO tricks.
An important element of Google’s decision to rank your site highly is how long people spend on the site and the pages that they visit.
Your site needs to load quickly and so good well managed hosting should be a priority alongside clean code and design elements. Google uses the speed pages take to load into account for it’s ranking calculations.
Most important and the way to achieve a high vote from Google is to have relevant, engaging, useful and interesting content. Content that is linked to and shared will tell Google that your site is worthy of a high ranking.
The way to make your site rank highly for a specific subject is to make sure that your content is focussed around that subject. If your users are looking for good quality locally produced cheese, then make sure your site is all about good quality locally produced cheese.
Every page on your website needs to be treated as though it’s the first page that your visitor has landed on. After all you don’t know where that visitor has come from, they may have come from search, or a link from another site or from someone sharing on Facebook. Whatever the source you need to make sure that your visitor is guided to other relevant and useful pages within your site. Your navigation should point your readers to the main areas of your site and be present throughout and you should link wherever possible from within your content to other parts of the site. Don’t forget to use your main keyword phrases in the links, but only when it makes sense to the reader.
In conclusion, if you build a site full of interesting and useful content, that’s relevant to your subject and your users, there’s no reason not to rank well in Google and continue to do so. Using tricks and shortcuts might work well in the short term, but may be short lived.