Posted by
Joel Janovsky
Over the years a lot has been written about Search Engine Optimization, written by many different people with many different approaches to SEO. And the purpose of all their articles, blogs and books has been the same, to help people improve their SERP rankings. But there’s one tiny issue – no one (except Google themselves) can be 100% sure about Google’s “SEO rules” and changes in their algorithm – it’s all speculation.
Most of the main search engines, especially the biggest and most common one, Google, are changing their algorithm several times per day to improve user experience and prevent people from ‘cheating’, from improving their SERP results in an unfair way.
But surely, that doesn’t mean they haven’t driven several SEO professionals mad at times, including myself…
But as with everything else… With bad news comes good news… There are ways to to keep your site search engine optimized even when Google changes their algorithm… Make sure your On-Page content is optimized and ready to provide your visitors with top quality content on all your pages, not only the homepage – and make sure to lead your visitors to the “correct” page. An easy way to figure out if the correct page is being reached by your preferred keyword is by using the Daily Breakdown report.
One way, and the far most important, to keep your website well prepared for algorithm changes is to have a website full of quality content that’s appealing to your visitors. When your visitors are happy – Google will be happy too. While creating content for your website and its readers, there are guidelines to be followed – to ensure your visitors will be happy with the content you’re providing them with – I’ll cover a few of the most important ones here.
Make Sure Your Title is a Catchy One
A catchy site title brings curiosity to your visitors and
unconsciously invites them to read more of what’s written on your site -
and possibly make them spend more time on each of your inner pages. In
addition to a catchy title, make sure that your title contains the
keyword you’d like the page to be ranked for, in order to maximize the
potential for new visitors to find your website – and the correct page.
Make Sure to Constantly Update Your Website’s Content
To create a website once, stuff it with good and relevant content and then “leave it there forever” will not help you increase your long-term SEO rankings, rather the opposite. Content must frequently be added to your site, and once again a few guidelines must be followed:
- Keep in mind, the content must make sense.
- Avoid keyword stuffing. If your chosen keyword is being used in every phrase or paragraph, your visitor will get a feeling that you’ve “cheated”, not added valuable content “for real” – and most probably the search engines will penalize your website for that reason.
Quality – and Quantity Content
Even though search engines may attach higher keyword prominence rating to the first 100 words on each page, long texts can provide better value and authority than short ones. So in order for you to maximize your content, make sure:
- The first 100 words (preferable the first paragraph – even better, first sentence) contains the correct keyword.
- To avoid spelling and grammar mistakes. Although search engines seem to be getting smarter, they can still be very picky and critical over such mistakes and could easily make your site ranking decrease for such a simple reason.
- That your site is easy to read and understand by your target audience. Readability is another important factor that Google and the other search engines take into consideration when rating the user friendliness of your webpages. Our On-Page Readability Test can help you ensure that your content is reader friendly.
Optimize Media Elements – Images, Pictures and Videos
These elements sometimes happen to be forgotten about, but make sure to remember it next time. Or if you did forget about them, fix it for the simple reason that the SEO advantages for creating content full of media elements are man, such as:
- It makes the reading easier for the website visitor, and that’s something that the search engines appreciate.
- Images and videos have also proven to increase the average time that a visitor stays on a site, which is another factor that can improve your SERP position. The longer people are staying on a website, the better the content must be. That’s one of Google’s ways of rating a site.
- Alt Tags and Image file naming is another way to utilize your keywords in the code of the site. A simple but very powerful way of boosting your SEO, not to be forgotten about.
While Google is changing their algorithm and “forcing” us to change our SEO tactics, make sure to use Rank Ranger’s On-Page Optimization Tool to ensure that your content is SEO friendly. This is an easy way to improve your SEO and make sure to remain in the top even when the search engines are driving you crazy! Time after time…
About The Author
