As many of the fellow SEO professionals will vouch, it is becoming more and more challenging for websites to rank organically on Google. Google does more than 3000 updates yearly on its search algorithms to make itself more nimble and competitive. It is this mindset of always improving that has made Google the search behemoth that it is with is omnipresence.
As many of the end users don’t realize at the end of the day Google is also a business. Google generated more than 100 B dollars in revenue through Adwords last year. This might be another reason why Google keeps making things really interesting for the companies who want to rank organically and generate traffic to essentially bypass the Adwords channel.
Following are some of the latest trends to watch for if you want your website to rank higher organically on Google:
Voice Search
As more and more voice based devices conquer homes and offices search is going to change in its elemental form. As the mobile based search revolutionized the way people look for access information voice based search is going to make everything conversational. The tone, content and language will have to take specific nuances of language into consideration.
User experience and content
The search algorithm becomes more and more sophisticated user experience is becoming more and more important. At the end of the day Google wants to deliver the most relevant information the user is looking for in the shortest possible time. If your website is ranked higher due to unethical practices such as keyword stuffing the user will end up spending very less time on your website. This will in turn result in higher bounce rate on your website. This will indicate to Google that the user is not looking for the info he needs from your website. Eventually this will result in your ranking being dropped in organic search.
Content- is still the king
As discussed in the point above. Google needs to deliver excellent customer experience to its end users. Whenever you are planning to put something on your website, blog or on social media make sure that you have done due diligence for it. Doing a slap stick job might end up in a slap from Google for your overall organic rankings. Some pointers which can be helpful are:
Is the content I am putting out relevant to end user?
Is the content delivering something which is different and over and above what exists already?
Will the content result in users’ spending more time on my website?
Will my bounce rates come down as a result of what I am posting?
Mobile is the way forward
You would have realized the upward spiral for mobile optimized websites in last few years. The searches happening on the mobile account for well above 50% mark worldwide with counties like US having this percentage hovering around 70%.
Google also announced its mobile indexing first policy recently. What it’s telling you is this- please get a new mobile optimized website for your company if you want to rank higher on Google. You will also have to make sure that you have fast loading speed for mobile. Else you will have higher bounce rate and you will get a step fatherly treatment from Google.
In the conclusion make everything user centric and do everything form perspective of improving the lives of you customer. If your customer is happy with your content offering then Google will be also be happy.
