There have been many proponents over the years who have claimed that SEO is either dead, dying or ineffective. What these proponents fail to consider is the everchanging nature of SEO as it is developed. What may have been considered effective a year ago may not provide the same results today. Google is the major driving force in the evolution of SEO as it constantly reviews and makes changes to the algorithm used to determine which websites get the top spot in web searches.
The change in effective SEO over the years has been dramatic to say the least. In the early 2000s, link spamming was an effective way to help your website rank highly in web searches. The quality of the link did not matter, which led to many websites creating links back to the home page in order to increase the websites ranking. Today, spamming your website with unhelpful links severely damages the ranking of your website.
The evolution of SEO can most easily be seen with changes Google introduced in 2014, which meant that well-optimised websites were given a significantly higher ranking than poorly-optimised websites, and more recently in 2018, where Google made changes which made websites that are optimised for mobile viewing rank higher than those that are not.
SEO has arguably become more prevalent than ever before, with social media platforms such as Facebook using detailed algorithms to determine which pages get the top result in searches. This can be the defining factor in whether you, or your competitor, are featured in the top spot for searches on your industry.
So, here’s a quick guide to maximise your SEO today:
- Optimise your website for mobile viewing – since 2018, Google has given greater weight to websites which have a good mobile site than those that have a good desktop site. The speed pages load at, how user friendly the navigation is and the size of the buttons are some of the considerations Google uses to rank websites.
- Optimise the loading time for your website’s pages – Google considers the loading speed of website pages more important than ever when ranking websites.
- Optimise content to be suitable for featured snippets – featured snippets are the text boxes Google places at the top of a search page with a paragraph of information on the topic being searched. They are typically used when users have Googled a question, extracting information from the selected website to provide the desired answer to the question. You can optimise your content towards being featured in snippets by anticipating what questions users may ask and tailoring your content to provide a brief 40-60 word answer to the question.
- Update your website to HTTPS security – in July 2018, Google introduced an update which makes websites with HTTP rank lower than those which have HTTPS.
- Optimise your content for voice searches – with the increase in popularity of voice searches through home automation devices such as Google Home, optimising your content for voice searches can mean the difference between your content being viewed or not. This can be achieved by tailoring content to reflecting how a person would speak out a question, similar to how featured snippets are optimised.
If you would like a complimentary SEO report run on your website to identify any issues, please give us a call.