How do you decide what movie to watch when you head out on a Friday night?
How good is a new movie when it hits theatres? The answer is simple. Check its earnings, ratings and ranks. It is what every concerned website owner, and its shareholders need to know – Show me the tracking rankings! By looking over these elements, you’ll be able to make an informed decision if it’s worth you investing into…right?
The faster you notice a positive or negative change, the better prepared you are to improve your positioning. This is why it’s important you apply the best strategies online especially those which have been endorsed by Google. You have to make sure you follow Google’s rules so you don’t get penalized going forward.
When things start heading south for specific keywords then make one of the following 7 changes. These will help you get back on track, and help you build your brand, generate traffic and meet your bottom line.
Step 1: Internal linking Structure
When I want to read an article, I don’t want to have to click any other additional links to be able to read it. You need to make a conscious choice whether you want to build a site to have many clickable options or impressive content. Using rich anchor text is a mistake many sites make. Linking one of your webpages to another can be done via anchor text or internal linking. Users are tired of reading websites which are flooded with “click here” hyperlinks. In the past this was a means of improving your SEO and it is not anymore.
Internal linking can be accomplished by avoiding rich anchor text. Let’s assume that a given word is repeated 10 times in an article. The bottom line to internal linking is to initiate the first instance of the word, and leave the rest of them as normal. Maintaining integrity for the content and not misguiding the search engines with excessive hyperlinking will help you in the long.
Search engines take approximately 3 months to appreciate changes to sites. Make the changes with integrity, and don’t overkill for the future.
By embracing internal linking one can build trust directly with the user, and possibly even get bookmarked as a favorite. Here’s another cool strategy to use when building internal links within your content. Make sure you mix up the anchor text used to include relevant or LSI keywords. The key is to mix them up, but make sure they are relevant to your linked content at the same time.
Step 2: Speed up your site.
Today’s generation of people are ever so demanding. When’s the last time you waited for dinner to be prepared from scratch at a McDonalds? Never, right! We expect businesses to value our time and pre-plan for our arrival. Like all users when we click on a link to a site we want it to load quickly. When sites take a long time to load we naturally assume that we need to refresh or the link is broken, click back and go to the next site.
Google pays close attention to the speed of your site because as ranks increase so does traffic, and it’s their job to ensure that your site is built to withstand an increase in traffic. Check out Google Page speed. Today, your site could perform correctly with the amount of traffic it receives; however, as site traffic increases this could result in a bottle neck. Ensure that your hosting company allows for greater bandwidth.
- Constantly track your site speed
- Always incorporate changes to your site to stabilize or increase load time.
- Compressing images is a great way to increase the overall speed of your website.
- Track your data so you know what caused the speed to drop.
Step 3: Build Links to The Page Where Rankings ARE High
It’s Monday morning at 9:00am, and you check your Page Rank in Google. You’ve noticed a downward spiral and trend establishing. Many people make the mistake of going head-on, and making drastic changes which hurt you more then, actually providing you with a benefit. For example, they’ll increase their internal linking by increasing the amount of keywords linked which ruins the natural flow of the content. Avoiding the notion of hyperlinking every single repeated keyword will help you in the long.
The key here is to stabilize the downward trend, and not switch its momentum. The upward climb will take a few months for Google to take note of the positive changes made, and your keywords will start to rank higher. During this process you should make the changes, and be patient for your site to be re-indexed again.
Check out this guide: http://www.quicksprout.com/the-advanced-guide-to-link-building/
Step 4: Update Your Web-Page
What do Google’s users want? Fresh, new, and constantly updated sites because this provides value. By making changes to your site Google knows you’re keeping up with new technology. With the adaptation of smartphones, it’s important your content is mobile optimized so it’s displayed correctly on every device. This will ensure you have content which is going to engage everyone no matter how they are reading your content. The higher the user experience, the better chance you’ll be able to convert readers increasing your ROI.
What happens when customers have a better experience? They will share it on social media.
Changes do not always have to be drastic. The method I’ve always embrace is KISS which means “Keep It Simple Stupid”. This is a strategy I learned from Neil Patel, and has worked incredibly well when building momentum. It’s time to skim through your site so you can clean it up, change the color scheme, and improve your content.
I also recommend keeping tabs of past rankings and documenting changes. Build an expectation from your team to meet the highest standards possible, and naturally your site ranking will increase. Using this approach will also allow your team to remember what you’re expect from them going forward.
Step 5: Increase Your Click-Through Rate
The Google Webmaster Tool account allows you to monitor your click through rates. This is something your team needs to be paying close attention to because you know Google definitely will be. The bounce rate, and CTR are both in their 200 ranking factors. It’s a quick way for Google to determine if your listing is relevant to their end user, and this increases the likelihood of getting higher Google AdSense rates too if your part of their program. CTR actually provides enormous information to Google which we sometimes don’t think about. For example,
Through CTR, Google can determine the following:
- Value of the content you have provided
- The ultimate user experience
- The layout of your website
- How easy it is for users to find other relevant content on your blog.
In the end, whenever you publish content, you should have elements in place to track your overall CTR. As your blog grows you’ll be able to gather even more information about the value of your content. The more people who click-through, the better content you have provided for your users. This means a lot for Google, and will help boost your overall rankings within the SERP’s.
Solution #6 Optimize Your Design
Mobile devices are growing, and there are several plans which offer incredible data coverage for subscribers. However, even with the abundance of data, it’s important your content can be downloaded quickly on mobile phones. This will allow these users to save data, and be able to access your content right away too. Think about when you skim online, and how long you’ll wait for data…right? You’ll notice if a page doesn’t load right away, you’ll MOST likely leave and visit another competitive website.
It is becoming increasingly important for sites to trim the fat, meaning, remove the elements which are NOT needed so your page will load faster. Make use of the tools you have available like plugins which encourage image compression, responsive designs, and even customized layouts for mobile phones. At the same time, you have to remember Google’s update which rewards sites which are mobile optimized…right? If you haven’t implemented a mobile design by now, then you’re missing out on enormous traffic.
Solution# 7 Increase Your Social Shares
Social media is a great way for users to recommend articles, and in-order for a user to share articles it must meet two criteria’s. First, an article must be very easy to share meaning it MUST have social buttons in the right place so people can one-click to post it. The good news is there are so many plug-ins which make this easy to do. For example, AddThis.com will allow you to embed social media icons within minutes. However, it’s important you know which ones to include for maximum exposure. For example, don’t waste time giving people poor social platform options because too many choices will reduce share quality. In my experience, it’s best to focus on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
Secondly, in order to have people to share your content it must be of high value, and provide substance. No one will share your content if you don’t provide value, and the content is NOT unique. Write high value content, and you’ll have no problem having people share your content to generate enormous buzz going forward.
The effect of social media could lead your article going viral, and impress Google. Users endorsing your content to hundreds of friends on sites like Facebook.com could increase your Google page rank at no cost. In the end, people won’t have to search on Google to find your content, because it will be appearing on social platforms, and even newsfeeds which are awesome for traffic.
Focusing your attention on ensuring people share your content on social networks. I’ve noticed when people share my content it shows me what they like to read, who my audience is, and what social platform to focus on going forward.
Here are a few tips to apply to your social marketing going forward.
- Deliver rich, entertaining and trusted content. Spend the time before you publish anything to make sure it is GOOD. I often draft four articles, share them amongst a few of my friends and ask them to rank the articles. Always go with the #1. This will provide constructive feedback at the same time from people who will give me their honest opinion.
- Add social media plugins to your articles. If your using WordPress, you’ll find a handful of awesome plugins which you can install with the click of a button.
- Ask your followers to share, like, and recommend your site. Don’t be shy in asking. A lot of people out there who truly believe in your work will help spread the word. However, keep in mind that value is always the way to go. Ask them to share, and make sure they know it’s valuable what you have written.
- Social media sites allow us to pay for marketing. This option will depend on your budget so re-evaluate your marketing each month. You might want to give it a try to see how it helps increase your engagement. I believe in giving something a try once, then tracking data and make a decision going forward if it’s worth the investment.
Final Thoughts
I hope you enjoyed this content, and its time to go through each solution above to implement them into your blogging. Ad you apply different strategies make sure you keep track of what’s working so you can continue to optimize as time goes on. These solutions can help increase traffic, conversions, engagement very quickly.
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