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The most profitable/sustainable digital marketing channel through which to build a businessu2019s long term flow of leads and new customers is organic search.<br>
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Boost Your Algorithmic Credibility Credibility is crucial to SEO success. Each component part of Google’s EAT model of quality rating points to credibility as a critical factor. EAT is an acronym for: • Expertise • Authoritativeness • Trustworthiness While you and your business may have expertise and authority in your industry; and, you have developed a high level of trust in your community, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Google and other search engines view your business as credible. Few websites are actually evaluated by a human being as part of Google’s process to determine rankings. That function is accomplished by the well-known and oft-referenced Google algorithm, which is one of the most widely-used artificial intelligence engines in the world.
Emphasize Your Relationships If your business is established in your community and industry, then you probably have strong relationships with other businesses and people in your business community. You should make those apparent to the Google algorithm. Do you volunteer for a non-profit? Ask the organization to link from their website to yours. Are you purchasing products or services from a vendor in your industry? Offer to provide them a free blog post written by you (an expert in your industry) and make sure that your bio includes a link to your company website. Make sure that the chambers of commerce and other industry groups to which you may belong include a link on the organizational website to your business’s website. SEO professionals often refer to this activity as link building. Joshua Hardwick, Head of Content at the SEO software company, AHREFs, writes about link building and off-page SEO at his company’s blog
Use Your Data to Establish Credibility One great way to build links to your website is to create content that is likely to be used as a reference, according to SEO consultants Jim Harmer and Ricky Kessler of DIY blogging site, This can be study results or other industry data that is statistical in nature Build Trust Through Reviews & Review Responses There is an entire sub-category of digital marketing built around online reviews. It is called reputation management, and it is an important part of algorithmic credibility. Positive online reviews are an obvious credibility-builder. However, there is one more step to take to maximize your algorithmic credibility with online reviews. You should respond to each review, positive or negative. Not only is this just a good business practice, but it also demonstrates to Google that you are responsive to your customers, which is a factor for ranking. There are marketing technology companies, such as BirdEye, that automate much of the reputation management process, even automatically pushing out positive reviews through your social media accounts.
2. Provide Comprehensive Content SEO educator, Brian Dean analyzed more than one million websites and concluded that longer content correlates with higher ranking. Across the board, the average content length for Google first-page results is almost 2,000 words An impactful SEO strategy involved doing keyword research to tease out every valuable search term that a user might query and then stuffing all of your content with those words and phrases. The content didn’t necessarily have to be valuable to the user nor did it have to be complete or comprehensive. Now, the Google algorithm is much smarter. It understands word meanings more accurately and will, in fact, penalize web content that seems spammy and low value.
3. Pay Attention to Structure The Google algorithm understands and values structure. Two great examples of building structure that Google will reward are: • How information is organized on an individual page • How pages are linked to another on the same site A content cluster is a group of individual content pieces (like a blog post) that are related to one another. There is a central piece of content, known as the pillar page, that addresses a broad topic, and is usually the longest piece of content in the cluster. There are also shorter content pieces, known as cluster pages, that treat a narrower topic that is related to the larger topic of the pillar page. Each of the cluster pages links to the pillar and vice-versa. HubSpot’s Mimi An is an advocate of this model
4. Fix Your Technical SEO Problems If you have been doing everything right; your content is comprehensive and well-structured; you have boosted your algorithmic credibility; your business has positive reviews to which you have responded; and, yet you still can’t your website to rank well, then you probably have technical SEO problems. Technical SEO problems are technical issues with your website that suppress rankings. Some common technical SEO problems include: • Robots.txt file prohibiting Google from crawling the site • No sitemap or an incorrect sitemap • The site loads slow • Multiple pages on the site with identical or near-identical content • Domain/subdomain problems
5. Additional Advice from SEO Consultants These tips from SEO consultants are only the tip of the iceberg regarding effective and profitable SEO practices. If you want a more personalized and tailored experience; advice and a plan that addresses your specific situations and goals,