Well what I really mean is to put your website on a content diet. In months and years past, it was a great idea, and SEO strategy, to build some really great content to help build site authority. This was a winning strategy when Google was counting links and in counting inbound traffic.
Now however, Google is watching relevancy and that means click through rate and bounce rate of your website. Content that was informational in nature that gave your site a 75% and higher bounce rate is now a liability for organic placement.
As an example, before my own cleanup due to some of the content I was carrying, my bounce rate was around 75%. After my cleanup, my bounce rate is now 39.07%. I simply redesigned my site, revamped my content and actually dropped pages that were just built to be informational, instructional or to build authority.
As you make site changes you should at least shoot for the overall global average bounce rate of 46.9%. What used to be great to fluff up traffic and boot organic placement may now be dropping you in the SERPs!
If you have been using Google Places or Google+, Google has a new property call Google My Business that you need to be looking at and migrating to.
First notice that even if you have been posting on Google+ pages you may not have a Google My Business site. For that matter if you’ve had a Google Places or Google Maps page, you may still need to re-verify to migrate that page to Google My Business.
Here’s what I’ve found out. I have a number of Google+ pages that I routinely post to as well as a personal Google+ page. I even had one Google Places page. When I set up my own Google My Business page, it was a different URL than any of them. Sigh… that means I had to start all over in building a fan base as any of my existing pages did not migrate into the new Google My Business page.
The Google My Business pages even look different. You’ll know you have one if over the cover image you see things like your office hours, your address, and website URL. You can see the cover image of my own in this post and view my site online.
Google is really pushing the Google My Business pages. My Google AdWords account rep even told me this past week that Google AdWords will be doing away with the ability to add business addresses manually in AdWords and using only the Google My Business page for locations in the near future. This means that it is time to get going on embracing this new Google product.
Personally I hate that the migration did not allow me to pick up one of my existing pages about my business that had a nice number of followers, but this is Google, it is their way all the way.
So, better get prepared for the future, as it is clear that Google will want to only deliver Google Maps and Google organic results pointing to a verified Google My Business page in the very near future.
In a nutshell, Google wants quality, relevant, unique, mobile-optimized content. The content that appears highest in the search results will be those that Google deems are the most relevant for a user’s query. The key is what Google deems most relevant and how a business owner’s website can make it into the pool that Google will select from to show for each unique query.
With Google showing results that are mobile-location determined specific, based on the user’s current location, and based on historical data of a user’s search history; relevancy simply cannot be determined by the keywords or for that matter even content on your website that you control. There is simply no way, based on the current Google parameters, to consistently garner top organic placement with some many variables being determined by Google’s file on the end user.
However, Google has still provided insight into what it considers important for a website owner to do on their end so that a website can even be included in the results that will be “racked and stacked” based on the individual users needs. These items are hugely important to embrace if your website is going to be a player in the way Google now delivers search results.
Here are some of my top tips for website owners to follow:
1. Make sure you craft your message for relevancy to users not search engines.
2. Be transparent in all you do; what you sell, who you are, what you do with user information; where you are located, and so forth.
3. Don’t use tactics that you may find difficult to explain to others or that may degrade over time in an effort to simply garner search engine placement now.
4. Focus on what makes your website, products or services unique and sell that uniqueness on each and every page.
5. Here’s the big list of don’ts – no automated content, no scraped content, no link schemes, no hidden text, no affiliate program sites will place without additional unique and value-driven content, no abuse of rich snippet coding. You’ll want to visit this page for more don’ts.
6. Google has even noted that website owner’s should pro-actively monitor for hacking now, as well as rogue installation of malicious code and excessive spam comments.
Additionally Google states that low quality pages are not okay, hiding content with CSS or JavaScript is not acceptable and will now be filtered out algorithmically, as well as inclusion of about us pages and contact us pages are now must have’s.
The key for website owners to consider, to even have the chance to appear for a user’s search, is to focus on the positive, unique, winning aspects of your business or product. Be transparent and honest about what you sell and do. Doing all of this then gives you the opportunity to be added to the mix of results that Google will then chose from to return a list of sites each unique user search query with a strong focus on what is “right” and “best” for the searcher.
If you need help with your content changes or a refocus strategy, I encourage you to contact my firm today at www.McCordWeb.com.
It’s time to carefully review your website’s content.
Like never before, you’ve got to keep a careful eye on your content; reviewing your online message for authority and placement. Google is penalizing thin content, duplicate content, and link-heavy content.
How can you make sure your content stays in the “green zone” versus the “red – penalty zone”? Here are a few tips to identifying and solving content related issues.
1. Check the bounce rate of your pages in Google Analytics. Look for pages where your bounce rate is higher than 75%. If the page has over 300 to 350 words of content you may want to consider if you want to keep the page. It may simply be a one stop page that does not lead prospects further in to know about your product and may need to be removed or updated to entice them to travel further into your site. Or if the page has under 250 words, the page may be too thin and need a rebuild.
For some of our clients, a 75% bounce rate may appear on pages that had previously been built for in-depth articles or to build site authority. These pages, although valuable years ago for SEO, may now be penalizing a website with a high bounce rate with Google as the site reader comes in to visit, but never makes it off that one page.
2. Consider using a tool like Screaming Frog to scan your site (up to 500 pages for free more with a license) for word count. You can watch a video of what the tool does on the Screaming Frog website. Target the pages that you find that have about 250 words only and then review the bounce rate in Google Analytics. Additionally I would recommend you take a look at pages that are over 1,000 words. In today’s mobile-sensitive Google extra long pages that will not render well on mobile or may cause excessive scrolling may damage your placement as well. Consider those extra long pages as candidates for a “break-up” into multiple pages that will be mobile reading friendly.
3. Use a tool like the MOZ Site Explorer to get a snapshot of what is happening with nofollow links and authority of inbound links. Use the tool to find your top linked pages as well as the top anchor text. Although you can see a few things for free the paid version will unlock more data if you decide to buy it. Taking a look at outbound links from a page may give you additional possible content related penalty insights.
Content pages under about 250 or so words, with lots of outbound links, and that have a high bounce rate may actually help to lower your website’s overall Google placement. Although one page or two certainly will not play a big factor in your overall ranking having a significant number of problem pages may set up your site for a Google thin content penalty.
With many website owners not reviewing their content except when they update to a new website, some businesses have content that has not really been reviewed for over three years and in some cases much longer than that.
If you have not taken a careful look at your business online presence recently it is important that you take a look now, as Google is factoring in thin content and bounce rate into their organic placement algorithm.
If you are looking for help to rework your content for Google and to build value for readers, I encourage you to contact McCord Web Services today. We are content experts!
