From McCord Web Services – Google Partner and Web Visibility Experts
I watched this Google Hangout this past week and wanted to share it with you as you may really like some of the pre-made scripts (like the broken link checker that this video shows how to set up). You can watch it online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqQ19h7OwYs&feature=youtu.be
I am no programmer, but I will definitely be trying out some of the easy to configure out of the box scripts that run at the Account level and even MCC level.
If you thought that organic placement was all about keyword density you’d be right on one count, it is the keyword but no longer the density; search engines are just too smart to accept spoon-fed content.
Welcome to the world of advanced keyword tactics and how search engines are using them today.
1. It’s no longer density or repeating keyword phrases in your content, it is about natural language and keeping one page on one topic. The actual terms are TF-IDF (term frequency – inverse document frequency) and semantic distance and term relationships. What this means if that Google understands what your entire website is about by reading all your pages. They understand synonyms and the phrases that you use. This makes it key to organize your website into smaller blocks of content; stick with one topic per page. Not only will this work better for search engines, but mobile users will love you too.
2. Page segmentation is important. Understand that what you put in sidebars, navigation, headers and footers is less valuable for Google ranking that what you put in the page’s main body content. Help Google to understand your page’s content better by using only one H1 tag per page and breaking the content into subheadings and bulleted text sections. Know that your main theme should be mentioned in the first sentence, or at least the first paragraph, so that Google understands clearly the importance of your terms or concepts. Write with style, following the guidelines of using an introduction, body, and conclusion when you create your content.
Even if your page has been crafted to these specifications, there are off-site factors that will impact where you appear in the search rankings, number of links, number of links from authority sites, and relevancy of your content to the user’s search query, just to name a few. Google has over 200 signals that it evaluates as part of positioning your website in the organic search results; some are known and some are not.
The first step is to build the best content-informative site you can that answers questions that readers would want to know about your products and services.
If you need help identifying areas of opportunity for your site, I offer a paid site evaluation and report. Use my experience to create a roadmap to identify areas of opportunity for your website as you plan to position it in the organic results.
Just this last week Google announced that it was ready to start penalizing websites that did not offer a good mobile web experience. Here’s why:
• Mobile devices have been a driving factor in an increase in time spent online. In fact, since 2010, the time the average individual spends online has doubled.
• 91% of adults in the United States own a phone; 61% of those phones are smart phones.
• In 2012, marketers spent $4.4 billion on mobile advertising in the United States alone. By 2013, that number doubled to $8.5 million. By 2017, the figure is expected to fall around $31.1 billion. Search and PPC advertising accounts for nearly half of this budget.
• 25% of adults in the United States only use a mobile device to access the Internet. PCs have become tools of the past.
• Organic search results matter now more than ever before. In fact, one-third of all search clicks go to the top organic result; this means that the mobile icons Google is testing could play a larger role than you’d imagine going forward. Read the full article online.
What Google is doing about this important trend is very important. In the search results, Google has been testing aggressively just how it will be notating information about your website. It has tested a variety of icons that are cues to readers that they experience when they click into a particular site will be mobile read friendly since September with testing continuing.
The next step most SEO’s feel is coming in the near future is an update in the Google search algorithm to penalize sites that do not offer the “right” experience, from Google’s point of view. Remember, Google is all about relevancy. If it stops keeping its eye on that mark, its own share of the market will change.
Already it is predicted, with Facebook’s strong growth this quarter in the mobile arena, that Google share will drop below 50% of mobile search activity. So, Google must stay focused on making sure that its search results for the mobile space are the most relevant and easiest to use in the search world for this growing audience of mobile search users. If it does not, it will lose advertising dollars and its place in the marketplace as the top search engine.
If your website does not have a great mobile experience, you may want to consider our mobile and device responsive websites that are strong on content and SEO for your next upgrade.
Make sure to read my blog post from Monday about eye tracking studies as this will help you to understand this information.
As Google works hard to keep users on the search results page longer in order to not lose relevance but also to have the opportunity to serve more advertising and make more money, it becomes harder for business owners to get Google.com searchers into their website to see their full range of services, products, and marketing information.
How is Google keeping searchers all to themselves?
The Knowledge Graph
Although you may not know the name of this feature, surely you have seen it in action when you have done a search recently. The image at the top of this post is of one such knowledge graph boxes that pop up on a search I did recently on Pope Francis. Google chooses when to show this additional content which is gleaned from a variety of sources. In many cases the information is supplied by Wikipedia or other relatively authoritative websites. One will not typically find content from business websites but rather news, Wikipedia, .org, Google images, or authoritative sites supplying the content found in the knowledge graph.
In some cases the knowledge graph may show results from your own Google+ contacts – another reason to start building your empire on Google+ to benefit your own business.
In many cases the reader simple gets the information they want from the knowledge graph and does not even leave Google.com for more information.
The Carousel
Just like you’ve seen the knowledge graph, you’ve seen the Google Carousel as well. Typically this black background slide show pops up for restaurants and hotels when you query a specific location.
By interacting with the ribbon you can see images pulled from the business’ Google My Business page, get directions, read reviews and even click into their website. Typically Google will preferentially show the business’ Google My Business (aka Google Places page) in the top organic spot in the organic search results with a map and a knowledge graph on the right. The actual business website may or may not appear at all in the organic results in the first ten results.
The Quest for Organic Placement Just Got Harder
Based on all these features that Google is loading into the search results page, it is getting harder and harder for a business owner to appear in the organic results. Just another reason why so many businesses are now flooding into Google AdWords in an effort to appear on the first page of search results.
All these changes are great for Google, making their search engine results page becoming a destination into itself and making it much more difficult for a business to garner traffic organically.
If there is one important take away from this information it is that a Google My Business page is now key for your business in order to be competitive and to potentially appear in the “local” knowledge graph and in the carousel and location specific results. With Google showing fewer website results you’ve got to use Google’s own products to leverage your exposure for desktop and mobile searches.