Authority is the key.
Google wants to reward great websites with high rankings. But what are they actually looking for? What they’re ultimately looking to do is find authorities. The website owner needs to think, how can I build up the authority of my website in the eyes of Google?
When you type in a search in Google, sometimes you see a website come up where it’s got what they call site links underneath. They’ve got links to different parts of your website when someone searches that particular phrase. That’s because Google has said, I really trust that website. I see it as an authority.
Try to focus on getting some good Google reviews and make sure you’re listed on Google Maps. This may not apply as much for blogs, it really depends on what your business is and what’s relevant. If it doesn’t make sense to put a Google Maps listing, don’t do it. But other things will make sense. Think about building up your website as an authority. To do this, you must ensure your website has good usability, well functioning technicals and good links.
Become an authority in Google’s eyes
Google doesn’t make any secret about how you actually become an authority. They’ve got their best practices web guidelines on what they recommend comprising the three different categories.
Usability of your website
The three areas that good rankings end up getting rewarded for are firstly the usability of your website. Previously, SEO, was all about picking the right keywords and putting them in the right places and doing links. But SEO now is a much more holistic thing. Google wants to make sure when someone visits your website they have a good user experience. If you have a poor user experience, no amount of good quality back links or keyword stuffing or whatever is going to help you rank.
So we need to think about usability which is all around making sure that when someone gets to your website, www.authoritycontent.com/, there are appropriate Contact Us pages and there are About Us pages.
Technicals on your site
It’s the same in the technical area. If your website has technical issues, if it loads very slowly, if it doesn’t do well on a mobile browser, if it’s having trouble crawling through your website, Google will give you a low score for your technicals. No matter how many great quality links you’ve got or how good your usability is, it won’t rank you very well.
Whether you’re doing it yourself or working with a webmaster, you want to make sure you have some of the things we know Google are looking for. You may have WordPress. The great thing about WordPress is a lot of the technicals work very well straight out of the box. That is one of the reasons WordPress is so popular because a lot of this is inbuilt into the actual framework. Whatever you use, try to ensure there are no problems in the technicals area.
The factor of links
The final one is the links which is still a very important factor but don’t just rely on links on its own. We now need to do links in a very natural way, particularly because of the Penguin update which really targets links. A lot of the previous linking methods now can do more harm than good. So it’s better to focus on creating some great quality content and sharing it out socially. Potentially if you’ve got some people in the industry or you can get some reference on other people’s blogs, a bit of that is great. But you don’t want to go too much beyond that.
Find that sweet spot
We need to make sure we fix these three areas: usability, technicals and links. When they all get fixed, the sweet spot right in the middle is where you’re going to get your great rankings. Make sure you have each one performing very well. Otherwise Google will give you a low score and when it’s multiplied out by the others, it will actually give you a net low score.
Do you need help with optimising and creating a true Google-friendly website? Our team of SEO experts can do it for you. Check out this page to learn about our services.