How to help your website climb the Google ladder
Getting as high as possible in Google searches is one of the main aims of every company’s main aims for their websites, and though some take the route of pay per click advertising (sponsored links which appear at the top of Google searches) this is not always a worthwhile or cost effective strategy. So climbing the extremely steep and slippery ladder that is Google’s ranking system and turning your website into a search engine’s dream is the main aim, although it can take time and effort it is much more worthwhile in the long run.
The first thing we need to establish is that Google fairly recently changed the way it searches, making many previous search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts not enough anymore. The good thing about this change however is that Google is ever becoming more and more human in the way it searches, and it now not only searches for the keywords you type into its search engine, but also considers your intent when searching and your previous search behaviour.
The reason it considers your intent, i.e. whether you are looking to purchase a product, locate a service, define something, and so on, is because if it were to simply search the words you had typed in then you may not necessarily find anything at all relevant to what you were looking for on the first page. Take the word ‘hammer’ for example. We can assume someone searching for the word ‘hammer’ is looking to purchase a tool of that description. Before Google changed the way it searched, however, the first 3 rankings that would come up when ‘hammer’ was searched were:
- A film production company with Hammer in the title
- A vitamin with the word hammer in the title
- A Wikipedia result defining ‘Hammer’.
These 3 results would be of no use to anyone wanting to buy tools. That is why now, Google assesses the intent of this search, i.e. why would someone be searching for hammer? and brings up results based on this intent that also contain the key word.
Then on top of this comes the consideration of the searcher’s previous behaviour. This is done by accessing your previous web history, previous searches and previous activity, and then bringing up results that match your previous behaviour. So someone who typed ‘hammer’ and had been looking at tools and related websites would be brought results relating to the tool, and those who had previously been looking at film production websites and typed ‘hammer’ would be shown to the film production company with hammer in the title. Clever eh?
This is all very good news to us as businesses, as we can now take on board these new search algorithms, and as well as incorporating basic SEO strategies into our website content we can ensure the content is tailored to fit in with our target audiences’ typical search behaviour and intent. Thus, making the climb up the Google ladder a little less steep after all.
Want more advice and information on sales and marketing strategies that could benefit your business? Contact the Streetwise Team and check out our website, www.streetwisesubbie.com
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