8 December 2021 - Richard Shire
Things in the world of SEO are changing, as ever. These days search engines aren’t just looking for keywords, although those are still very important, they are looking for top quality pages full of useful or entertaining content and written by trustworthy experts. Search engines need to find the pages that people actually want to see and will enjoy spending time on.
Good quality content is the most important thing you can have on your website, and you get that by being an expert who can write with authority on your topic. Cover your subject well, from lots of different angles, and Google will see that you know what you’re talking about.
With so many people browsing the web on mobiles and tablets instead of desktops, search engines are prioritising that experience. In fact, Google now consider the mobile version of your website first. If your site doesn’t work on mobiles, or if you have content hidden behind tabs or concertinas, it won’t rank as highly as it could.
Don’t forget that the ultimate aim of SEO is to get real people reading your website, so it has to appeal to them! Search engines are looking for pages that readers enjoy, one of the biggest factors currently is dwell time. If readers spend at least 3 minutes 10 seconds on your page after they click through then that page will be moved up the rankings. Writing engaging content that gives them the answers they need, in language they can understand, will help you to achieve that.
Both readers and search engines are looking for trustworthy websites, making sure you have an SSL certificate in place is an easy and relatively cheap way to achieve this. After all, nobody wants to spend much time somewhere they’re told is unsafe.
If you don’t already have a blog then now would be a great time to start one. Websites with more pages tend to rank highly and, as each blog post counts as a page, regularly posting is the easiest way to achieve that. Blogs are also a great place to include conversational style long-tail keywords, which reflect what your customers are actually searching for.
Google is prioritising video content more and more, so including videos wherever it makes sense can really boost your ranking. Not only that, pages with video get higher click through rates and people tend to stay longer, both of which boost your ranking even further. Of course embedding a video on an empty page won’t attract much traffic since search engines won’t know what it’s about. Include some good quality text with the relevant keywords, it could be an introduction and teaser paragraph but a transcript is even better. That way all your keywords will be visible to search engines, and it gives your visitors a choice if they prefer to read rather than watch.
If you would like to know more about how we can help you with SEO, and work to get you a good return on investment as well as higher ranking, just contact us here at Aspire Shire for a free consultation.