Over the past few years search engine optimisation has changed a lot, and many of the old tactics that used to be commonplace in assisting in that good ranking are now like that old Microsoft Zune Player you bought…
Very uncool and of little value.
When you take a look at the modern age of SEO, you’ll soon understand why these practices no longer work….
- We now live in a more-connected world, where local search, social media comments and ratings all matter.
- Voice search is popping up everywhere, making type-searching obsolete within a few years.
- Keywords now have very little relevance or value. It’s all about quality not quantity.
Unfortunately for most website owners, despite most web developers knowing the above matters, many webpages are still filled with the old-school SEO techniques and tactics that are starting to noticeably suffocate your web search rankings, conversions and traffic, taking your website down to a dark place that you could possibly never recover from.
If you’re already stuck on the 3rd or fourth page of search results, there is help to be pulled out of Google’s dumping ground and get back on top.
But to do this, first you need to look at what might be driving your site there and then remove these tactics so your website presence can improve.
Blogs….short is not sweet
We all know that if you’re not blogging these days your website isn’t going anywhere, but like going to the gym to wear off those winter rolls, no one wants to put in the effort to get results. But to prevent guilt they do the next best thing, a short effort.
A blog post of under 400 words is not even worth the time it took to write as it has very little value. If the person can read the majority of your content with very little scrolling required, then you haven’t given Google enough to rank your authority on.
You probably wouldn’t purchase a travel guide of just a few hundreds words, no matter how highly respected the author because you know there would be very little VALUE.
Your blog needs VALUE in the content to build up your AUTHORITY RANKING. High quality long-form content will always win over shallow content.
If you’re going to Post, don’t be erratic.
Blogging is great, but the biggest problem is most of us don’t have the time to do it, so we make the mistake of posting when we can fit in the time, which usually means we are erratic with post blogs, with inconsistent time variances between posts, and sometimes even post multiple blogs in one sitting, rather than space them out over an equal time frame.
Erratic posting causes a few issues:
Google can’t tell if you’re a consistent content provider when you post erratically, so it doesn’t give you the authority credibility you deserve.
Your fans are more likely to re-visit your site when they are expecting a post daily or on a particular day of the week, rather than than all over the place.
You’ll build much better authority more steadily if you are consistent, particularly if you plan on sharing your posts across social networks.
It is recommended to post around 14 to 20 times a month consistently to earn the most traffic growth and quality leads, and you’ll find your growth is around 4 times better than someone that only posts 1 – 4 times per month.
If you’re not much of a content writer, services like CrowdContent.com can provide affordable blog writing services to lighten your load.
Also create a blog schedule and stick to it to create consistency.
Quantity over Quality, or vice-versa?
The first thing you need to remember first and foremost is that Google is a search engine and a service that provides search results to people.
Both Quality and Content are extremely important, but quality always wins. There is no point writing a long extensive article if the content is of poor value to people.
So when writing an article ensure you have the facts correct, add as much unique quality information as possible and include the main keywords naturally placed in the content to create a high quality and informative document.
And remember, if you want to rank better or as good as the content on page one of Google, it needs to be better and provide more value.
Duplicate content, does it really matter?
Google is a real stickler when it comes to duplicate content, whether it be text, videos or images. Try doing a Google search for ‘Chris Hemsworth’ and you’ll most likely never see the same image appear, and the images that appear will usually be linked to the highest authority sites or blogs.
You can’t afford to get lazy with your content, particularly if you sell products online. You need to ensure every bit of text is unique. Anything under around 85% non-unique content could see you penalized and banished from Google’s golden palace.
Almost 65% of all websites seem to have a problem with duplicate content, which is actually a good thing…for you. Remove any duplicate content from your site, and this includes if you have the same text on your website also on your Facebook, Local Search or any other directory/social site as these sites most likely have a higher ranking value than your site, and you could end up penalising yourself without even knowing.
By removing any duplications and not being one of the 65% means you have a better chance to outrank them all.
The need for speed
N one like a slow loading website, including Google.
While the internet overall may have increased in speed over the last few years, more people are adding bells and whistles to their website such as large videos in the header, parallax images, as well as throwing as many WordPress plugins as they can find, which all place strain on your website’s resources and the loading time of your site. And Google knows.
When you think about a racing car versus a standard rod car of the same model, a race car is stripped of anything but the bare essentials to make it perform at the highest standard. The aim is to win the race, not to be a ‘show pony’. While it is nice to have some pretty features on your site, ensure you minimise them as much as possible in terms of optimising the images so they are uploaded at just the required size and no larger, use a plugins such as WP Fastest Cache to optimise script, and loading time overall.
Use a site like GT Metrix to measure your loading time and spot where it can be improved.
A faster site will race to the top of Google much faster.
Keep these factors in place and your old-school site will be the new cool in no time!
