Whether you’re new to this whole inbound marketing thing or you now call yourself an inbound marketer, you’ve probably read or heard about the type of practices Google likes and dislikes to help you rank. The following 3 internet marketing tips are important ways to help keep your website off of Google’s naughty list and here’s how.
In the search engine optimization world these days, this is probably one of the most important factors to find favor with Google. The new Hummingbird algorithm that Google announced in October verified that when people type in a word or phrase into Google it is now basing its search results on user intent. This means that Google is getting smarter, so bad tactics like purchasing backlinks, black hat link building services or keyword stuffing won’t get you anywhere near page one on Google. In fact, Google will penalize you for it. Instead, your internet marketing strategy should be focused on identifying the questions your potential customers are asking and writing content answering those questions. It’s not just about the words you type into the search bar, but about the meaning behind them.
While this phrase has definitely become overused, it still doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. Every successful internet marketing strategy revolves around relevant and remarkable content (there’s those buzzwords). What does this mean exactly? It means that you should start by having a blogging strategy for your business and start paying attention to your on page SEO. You should be blogging 3 times a week minimum if you want to see results, and even then it could take 6 months or more to gain traction. The reason blogging is so important to Google is that when it crawls your website it sees that you are consistently adding new information because each blog acts as a new page on your website. Pair this with using a relevant keyword topic in each blog and you’re on the right track. Same is true for your on page content. If you focus on a specific keyword on each page of your website, when people are searching for a specific topic your goal is to show up. Because you have fresh, new content on your site, and Google likes what you’re doing, you’re going to rank higher.
There’s always some new idea showing up about what Google does and does not weigh with more importance when it comes to ranking factors. The best indicator is the data from Moz’s 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors Survey that gives us insight on the different factors Google uses to rank a webpage high in search.
While we could get into all of the technical jargon, instead we’ll just focus on what it means for your internet marketing strategy. Based on the chart below the data tells us that:
Google is making a list and checking it twice, and not just in December, but all year round. As you start to plan your inbound strategy for 2014, keep the above internet marketing tips in mind. They are extremely important for you to constantly pay attention to so that you are following what Google considers to be best practices in the search world. As Google evolves to become smarter at giving searchers what they’re looking for, you want to make sure you are doing what you can to be found.
If you'd like to talk more about your internet marketing strategy, contact us! We work hard to understand Google and we're ready to help.