Keeping Up With Google
The undisputed leader in search engines is, of course, Google. With 5.6 *billion* searches every day to find users anything and everything they need, locally and around the world, your Google results ranking literally can make or break a business. Put simply: you really, really, really want to be on Google’s good side. But how? In a word (or three?): SEO.
Keeping up with Google’s SEO “recommendations” (they’re really more like requirements if you have any hope of getting your website to the top of their results page) is a full-time, non-stop job. Google after all, has an essential need to keep its users happy and a massive budget to achieve it, so they are constantly rolling out new algorithms that change how your site is viewed and ranked. The algorithms themselves are top secret trade information that even only a handful of Google employees know, but strategic advice on how you can keep up with them is pretty forthcoming, meaning if you’re willing to listen and take heed, boosting your site higher and higher in Google’s rankings is 100% possible.
As a starting point for those who already have an SEO strategy but are looking to take it to the next level, we’ve gathered some potentially-controversial SEO marketing trends and went straight to Google to find out if they actually help or hinder your business’s SEO strategy:
Page Vs Site Rankings
What’s more important: meticulously-planned individual pages on your website or the overall site as a whole? According to Google, it’s the latter. While both of course are necessary to great online presence and quality branding, it’s best to focus on your website as a whole. Google’s algorithms do rank both individual web pages as well as websites as a whole, but when broken down by their analytics parameters, especially when you add a new page to your website or Google launches a core update, it’s easy to see that the overall quality of your website trumps any individual URL within it. What does this mean for your business? Always aim to provide quality, readable, reliable content across an entire user-friendly site, and don’t be afraid to add or edit pages to do so. Your SEO will thank you. A great way to do this is through consistent publishing of analytics-backed blogs or articles. But remember to analyze and update all the other pages on your website too, as needed.
Google My Business Analytics
Speaking of measuring and monitoring your site’s audiences, Google is currently in the process of improving its analytics section for Google My Business which will break down your GMB viewers by Google Search as well as Google Maps, both in desktop and mobile searches. Directions, bookings and website clicks for Google My Business are also underway. This is potentially big news, especially now in an age when shopping local is all the rage (or required like in many places currently in lockdown along the Costa del Sol, including Estepona). These added metrics will give some great insight into your business and its online performance on an ever-increasingly important platform. Of course, this means that if you don’t already have a Google My Business page (or aren’t dedicating the necessary time to keep it optimized), now more than ever you need to take the time to do so. Now’s a good time too, to find and invest in a digital marketing agency that can use your site’s analytics and research-backed digital marketing strategies to help pull your business ahead of the competition.
Calls To Action
You know those pop-ups that appear on some web pages and ask you to sign up for a newsletter or mailing list? There’s a reason they’re there. They work. Newsletters offer one of the best return on investments in terms of marketing strategy and are an incredible way to organically grow your business’s audience. But is asking your website visitors to hand over their private email address damaging your SEO work?
Nope. While Google’s algorithms can and do, penalize websites for “intrusive” material, Google officials have confirmed that having a call to action pop-up or overlay doesn’t warrant much demotion in your Google ranking. That is, as long as the other content within your site is still highly relevant to your audiences and you don’t overuse pop-ups or overlays to the point of annoyance, Google’s interstitial penalty will be minor and won’t significantly effect your SEO. The takeaway from this is twofold: 1) Your marketing strategy should include a newsletter or emailer within it; and 2) If an occasional pop-up is needed on your website to grow your email marketing database of readers then by all means, do it. Your SEO will likely be penalized for it a bit, but that penalty is well worth the ROI payoff that email marketing produces. Just make sure you don’t have too many. A call to action overlay on every page of your site will effect your site quality status and thus your negatively impact your Google ranking. Instead, stick with one or two pop-ups that receive high visitor traffic, like your homepage or in strategic pages where visitors are already actively seeking a relationship with your company, like your contact and/or blog pages.
Having a solid SEO strategy that understands and keeps up with all the changes and recommendations that Google makes is one that takes plenty of time and ongoing effort, but is absolutely necessary, especially in today’s online world. If you’re looking to get ahead in your SEO strategy but not sure how to get there, let the SEO experts at Peppermint help! As a leading digital marketing agency we can build your new business a best practice SEO strategy that will get you the online exposure your new business needs. Or we can audit your current marketing plan to discover ways to make it even better, strategically implement them until your SEO goals are met, then work with you to maintain your lofty Google rankings as your business soars to new heights.
Ready to get ranking?