In our last post we discussed the recent changes in how Google is now displaying search results.  We gave you a couple of key tips to get your SEO campaign back on track.  In this post we give you another 4 tips to consider:

1.       Optimise your website and other online content for people – not robots!

Of course it is important to be aware of what Google are looking for when you craft your website content, however, it is always worth remembering that Google (as well as Yahoo, Bing et al) are highly unlikely to ever buy anything from you!  Most people will do a search in Google because they need something.  They are looking for an answer to a question or problem that they have. Anticipate those questions and problems especially if your products or services can solve the problem of the searcher.

Your keywords  and keyword phrases together with the actual web page content should always be crafted with a view to being able to solve the problems and answer the questions that your customers and  prospects are likely to have. Thorough keyword research is one of the most important aspects of effective SEO.  Try and move away from thinking about keywords just to please the search engines, instead think about the questions and problems that the person who will be typing in that keyword is likely to have.

2. Content, Content, Content!

Good quality content is King.  Google can spot artificial and spam links a mile off and will penalise you for them. Undoubtedly for any effective long-term SEO strategy, you need to concentrate on giving your readers great quality content that adds value to them.  This applies not just to your own website but to your content on all your web properties and even your content on other websites e.g. guest blogs that you write on other blog sites, posts on your LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter pages etc.

3.      Schema.org – and what is means to you.

The Big Three Search Engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing) have been working in collaboration to develop Schema.org. This is a set of website standards that will inform the search engines what your site is about thus making it easier for those engines to read the site’s data and index it accordingly.

By using rich snippets in your website, for example, you will be able to tell Google many things such as:

• what information to feature in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)
• product reviews and prices
• upcoming events
• recipe cooking times, etc.

The added data will increase your click-through rate because users are able to preview more about the link to your website before they commit to the click.

4.      The importance of analytics data

It is essential that you use a good analytics package to measure the effectiveness of your ongoing SEO campaign.  Where your keywords and keyword phrases rank in the search results is of course still a great indicator of progress, personalised search results make it far more difficult to gauge accurate keyword ranking positions.

Since Google has defaulted to private searches for users who make a search whilst they are signed into their Google account, it is even more difficult to track exactly how people arrive at your site.

We recommend that that you start relying more on key performance indicators (KPIs) to judge progress, for example:

• the number of landing pages you have
• the bounce rate of those pages
• the number of keywords driving traffic to each of those landing pages.

Google Analytics displays all of this data and more.

If you would like more information about the SEO services provided to UK Businesses by GB Web Marketing please leave a comment below or visit Griffin & Black Internet Marketing Services for Business in Surrey, Kent, Sussex and throughout the UK.