Love it or hate it, Google is the dominant force when it comes to
ranking your company's website. That ranking is registered when a prospect types
in a keyword to find something they're looking for like "dentist in East
Lansing" or "T-shirts in Fort Lauderdale." Google wants to
reward it's users by presenting the most relevant websites at the top of their
ranking page.
There aren't any "Google elves" sitting there answering
keyword searches. Instead, an algorithm is activated for every search. Throughout
the years, Google has tweaked the algorithm to make it better at finding great
websites for the respective search results. They keep the algorithm a secret as
many companies try to game it in order to be ranked higher. However, there are
general rules that Google has outlined what a relevant website should follow in
order to be ranked high.
According to Matt Cutts, Head of Google’s WebSpam team, fresh,
relevant content is the foundation for high rankings. So, how does Google tell
if a web page has high quality content? Consider these factors:
Duplicate Content
Google performs an
instantaneous scan and recognizes just as fast whether or not a web site has
overlapping and/or redundant content on your site. They look to see if you’ve
copied content from other sites by checking the age of the content and
percentage of similar content when comparing sites. Here is where your
inclusion of keywords could actually come back to haunt you, especially if they
are being overused. Does this mean you should abandon those keywords?
Absolutely not. However, you might also want to freshen up your existing
content if your keyword phrases all appear to be using the same phrasing.
Quality Content
Google is looking
for quality. When it can deliver that to its users then those users will come
back for more. Is your content well written? Are there grammar or spelling
errors? Does it read like a robot wrote the piece? There are many quality
content writers out there who can deliver engaging content. If you don't have
the skills, hire someone who does. One way Google measures quality content is
through tracking how long an user stays on the page. If they arrive on the page
and leave immediately, Google knows that the page wasn’t relevant to the search
query, or that the website content wasn’t good.
Relevant Content
Here is where you
need to search out the competition. Pretend you're a customer and Google the
same keywords you hope someone would use to look for your site. What businesses
come up on the first ranking page? More importantly, why did those sites come
up first? Take the time to study those pages to see what they are doing right
in terms of content, titles and headers. This is what you should be striving
for.
Viral Content
The best type of
content is something that will be shared. Whether that is an infographic, top
ten list or really cool photo, if you can get viewers to bookmark or share that
piece then you're spreading your message further across the web. Information
and humor are two solid items that can make a piece of content go viral. If you
can add a short, funny video all the better!
When you get right down to it, it's not rocket
science. It's all about quality.
