It’s easy to get pulled into the trap of thinking of search engines like Google as nothing more than computer systems that you need to appease with your content. You start thinking exclusively about statistics and numbers: how many keywords to use, how to break them up, what the ideal word count looks like, where you should put your links, etc.
There are two ways that most people think about web content: the overall message and the specific keywords. In some cases, the message takes priority. The content is designed to answer questions and engage readers. Getting the right message out, and keeping it on-brand, is the critical part of the process.
How many times have you searched for the same thing on Google? Odds are, you’ve done it a lot. Maybe you use Google to get the local news or weather and, rather than using an app or the related links, you just search “local weather” or “local news” every morning. Maybe you tend to shop for the same types of products, so you’re always browsing for them, and that means making the same searches.
When people first start thinking about search engine optimization (SEO), they tend to concentrate on visibility. The site needs to rank higher in the search results so that more people can find it. The traffic numbers are too low. They want more clicks. These are all valid concerns and they are definitely the focal point of a lot of SEO efforts.
Did you know that Google was storing your audio recordings? If not, the news that they’ve stopped may come as a surprise to you on many levels. The company doesn’t want to stop collecting this important information, but they have stopped doing it automatically. Instead, to get people to opt into the program, they’re giving every user the option and explaining what the storing process means and why it happens.
Ask most people who are interested in SEO what their goals are, and they’ll tell you that they want to rank higher on the search results. They may care about sites like Bing or Yahoo, but they’re generally focused on Google, the industry leader. They may state something about how most people never click beyond the first page of search results and so they want to get to that first page.
When you rank higher in search results, you get more clicks. Ideally, many of those people will stay on your website. Some of them, however, are going to quickly leave and return to the search results page. This is known as “bouncing” and it’s a problem because it often signifies that your site did not give them what they were looking for.
Have you ever been creating a hyperlink when you realized that the page you were linking to was massive and full of information? You were just using one single quote, but you had to link to the page as a whole. You knew that would make it confusing for the reader. Well, Google’s Chrome browser has taken that problem head on, utilizing a new extension that gives you the ability to pick out a fragment of text and create a unique link to that fragment.
Have you been thinking about revamping your website, updating your SEO or running an online ad campaign? Maybe you just aren’t sure when to start or if it even matters whether or not you act quickly. You know it’s something you want to do eventually, but you’re not feeling much urgency and you’ve been putting it off.