Andrew Riedel, SEO Gold Coast
As you can see from our home page businesses that have their websites sitting at the top of Google get over 40% of all the traffic for their particular keyword. Given more than 90% of potential customers search for their products and services online these days that is a massive advantage for any business.
“The Google Dance” is the term a lot of Search Engine Optimisation Companies use to describe their love hate relationship with the mighty Google. This year more than ever Google has been messing with a few heads who think they can outsmart the way Google determines who are the lucky few to sit at the top of the page.
Google Algorithm Updates
Google has all these wonderful names for their updates. So far this year, we have had the Penguin update, the Panda update, the Page layout update and now the EMD update. EMD stands for Exact Match Domains, and means a business has chosen their most powerful keyword and then purchased that domain name and built their website around it.
You can see our website is an Exact Match Domain. Our business name is SEO Web Magic but our domain name is SEO-GoldCoast.com.au. Has this worked for us? Absolutely! Have we been hit by the EMD Update and lost our rankings, absolutely not. Key in SEO Gold Coast in Google search, we are often number one and consistently rank in the top 3. Number 5 is probably the worst rank we have had in 2012, despite the turmoil of the past year.
Our Simple SEO Philosophy
We made a decision a few years ago when we elected to turn our ability to rank websites into a business that we would find out what Google really wants and just give it to them. A strange and weird concept I know.
While lots of SEO companies have been out there trying to trick Google with all sorts of crazy and spammy strategies we just continue to give Google what they want.
So What Does Google Want?
Google tells us over and over. They want:
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- Good quality, relevant content or information
- Information that gives the user (i.e. their customer) a great experience.
- A site that is constantly updated with the latest information, that people come back to over and over again
- Sites that match their content to the search term that we humans typed into the little search box
[/icon_list]We all come to Google to get our problems solved, find information and find the best value for money services.
SEO Web Magic has over 90 pages and posts and growing. There are over 20 pages containing training videos. This is what Google is looking for.
What Does Google Hate?
The same websites that you hate! Sites that
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- Have used spammy Search Engine Optimisation tactics to obtain top rankings for a particular keyword and then give us no information
- The sites that when you click on them are full of advertisements, have no valuable information and are a complete mine field to navigate.
- Sites that are just there to throw up the next bright shiny product for us to buy that we didn’t know we needed and collect our money.
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A Couple Of Tips On
How Can You Keep Google Happy
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- If you are doing your own Search Engine Optimisation, the biggest tip I can give you is to make sure your site has great information. Make sure you are adding articles, blogs, pages and offers at least once a month, more if you have the time. Write for humans not Google, they are very sophisticated these days, they can tell.
- Google also likes to see social proof. They want to see that real people like your site. Make sure when you are adding your Facebook and Twitter posts that you include links to your website. Not every post but occasionally.
- Make sure your site is set up so that it is easy for people to navigate. If you don’t know what makes a well set up site click on the link and sign up for our Video series “10 Biggest Website Mistakes”. You will be able to do an audit of your website and make changes that will please both Google and your potential customers.
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Have lots of patience. The days of optimising a website and ranking number one in a couple of weeks are gone, especially for brand new sites. Quality Search Engine Optimization takes time and is an on-going process. It takes time to build a quality website and achieve number one status. Google is looking for natural growth, so no, don’t rush out and commission 50 articles for your website and load them all on the same day. It won’t work.
For serious businesses, the days of “The Google Dance” are over. Technology is getting more and more sophisticated and so is Google. To gain that number one status you need to work at it but the rewards are immense. Remember 42% of people of the 90% of the population are searching for your product or service online.
And finally, I wouldn’t be a marketer if I didn’t remind you that your time is better spent assisting your customers and streamlining your business, not working out how to optimise your website to get it to the top of Google.
So, if getting your hands on those 42% of the 90% of the population who are searching for your product or service interests you, give us a call. We can run through our Search Engine Optimisation Packages. And yes, we will write your content, so you can breathe a big sigh of relief.
Andrew: 0414 320 016 Trish: 0408 528 161
Images by: flickr.com and photobucket.com