Search engine optimization strategies change based on Google announcements and industry studies, in which digital pros test and analyze SEO performance.  It’s our job to keep up with the latest and adapt our SEO strategies accordingly.

Links: Not Just for Sausages

Links come in at the top of Google ranking factors.

Incoming links from other websites to yours are called backlinks or external links. They are invaluable. When other websites link to yours, it shows you have credibility and authority. You can’t force other site admins to link to you, but you can make them want to by posting top-quality content.

Outgoing links affect ranking in several ways. One has to do with a trending topic of late: FAKE NEWS. Google rewards sites that link to reputable news sources and academic journals. Other authoritative sources might include government agencies, industry publications or nonprofit organizations. It depends on what you’re writing about and how reliable that website’s authority is.

Anchor text is the word or phrase people click on to follow the link. It affects SERP ranking for both backlinks and links you place on your site. Anchor text needs to be relevant to the URL to which you’re linking. Ideally, they’ll be keyword-focused. You want to learn how to bake cookies, not click here to learn to bake cookies. (Feel free to bring us cookies.)

Organic: Not Just for Vegetables

Content is king, or is it queen? Content is some kind of royalty! Beyond the digital marketing industry cliché, what does that mean? Glad you asked.

User experience describes the amount of time people stay on your site. Another is clickthrough rate (CTR): whether people click on your links. How do you keep people on your site, reading and clicking through links? You write useful, informative, engaging, relevant content. This is so important, we’re devoting a whole other newsletter to it.

Take advantage of headings and subheadings. These are marked up differently in HTML than regular text, and so Google puts more weight on them. Also, the font is bigger, so audiences put more weight on them.

Your title and description for each page should get to the point immediately. Florid introductions are nice in long-form journalism, but search users (and therefore search engines) prioritize fast results. Assume they’re looking for an answer to a question that came up at a party. Make sure your title answers a question and your description summarizes the content using keywords. You can create custom titles and descriptions; otherwise, the first 160 characters of your page comprise the description.

There are over 200 factors that go into SERP ranking. Anyone who claims to know them all, or to know exactly how much each factor affects your ranking, is swindling you. Even Google engineers can’t fully explain artificial intelligence because, well, it’s intelligent. What we can do is implement SEO strategies, analyze the results and continuously adapt to improve ROI. Ready to get started? Get in touch for a consultation.