Google SEO’s shrinking real estate has been a topic of great lament for internet marketers over the last couple of years. Algorithm heavyweights Panda and Penguin have not only made the practice of SEO quite mysterious but also one which requires great finesse, and a lot of trial and error.
But despite what you have been led to believe about optimisation, it has not experienced a complete revolution. There are still practical SEO strategies which will never go out of fashion as they serve as the most practical goals behind ranking websites in the first place. We discuss some below.
Logical Site Structure and Navigation
A site is a like a house, every room has its place and moving through it should feel like a logical exploration of that. For instance, you wouldn’t place a bedroom between the kitchen and the living room.
So your homepage and main navigation should only display links to important pages that are pertinent the information needs of a potential customers. Try not to repeat too many of the main navigation links, in the footer and always follow a logical hierarchy of categories and sub-categories.
Locality
For users looking for products and services, Google always assumes that the users want results for businesses that are close to them, particularly mobile users (unless they change their search settings).
Therefore, it’s important that your site establishes locality. Make sure you have a Google Places page which you have claimed ownership of and include a map marker and address details on your contact page. It will also help to create pages that discuss the areas you operate in.
Site Speed
Users don’t like waiting around for their site to load, so by extension Google will never like it either. Google offers free tools which test the speed of your site and even offers tips on the specific elements of your site that are dragging.
Elements which can affect the speed of you site can include: a lot of large high-res images, self-starting videos, flash animations, levels of caching and CCS and JavaScript issues.
Articles and Resources
Offer interesting and unique content to visitors, and make sure it relates strongly to your site. Create a resources page which offers tips to users and reports on the latest industry developments. The important thing is that there is no direct commercial intent behind the content, only to inform, and that it doesn’t copy any other articles. Product tutorials are also quite favourably ranked by Google.
The reason for links are so important to Google and why ‘content is king’, is because Google likes to offer its users insightful and interesting content. Articles and resources are a logical extension of this principle. They want you to link to other content that elaborates on topics better and offers them unique facts.
Remember that Google SEO doesn’t aim to be fair but rather just satisfy their users, which is the driving force behind many of the changes to their algorithms. Keep that in mind whenever you are optimising your site.