A big part of succeeding online today is getting lots of traffic, then converting that traffic into sales. Certainly you must have a website that is fast and works well with clean coding that the Googlebots like.
But after this foundation is in place, there has to be a big focus upon relevant, fresh content being added each month – This will help maintain your Google search page ranking. The days of the website mimicking an annual company report or brochure are long gone. A business website needs to be more like a newspaper reporting news and events happening in your business, or market sector.
A website that hasn’t had any regular content changes or additions made to it in the last 3-6 months, has likely plummeted in ranking and traffic.
Ignore those SEO experts promising great things
There’s a lot of misconceptions when it come to getting website traffic. Most businesses are still bombarded with emails promising great things if you signup to a particular SEO service offshore. Most are scams, especially those that talk endlessly about backlinks or keywords. Yes, still relevant, but less important now
Google do provide lots of superb advice on what to do. Their ranking algorithms this year do help small businesses especially. Website structure, good content and the blending in of social media is the key, as are trends in the fast-paced mobile space. A good, genuine practitioner of the latest SEO strategies is Jim Stewart in Melbourne. Here’s a classic podcast from him.
And forget about backlinks
This is an early sign your ‘expert’ is suspect. Jim and ourselves have done countless experiments proving that the need for lots of backlinks to your site to get ranked, no longer applies…. Similarly those that rant on about keywords. Since their hummingbird update in Sept 2013, Google has gotten better at working out site intent and less reliant upon keywords and keyword density popular a couple years back.
Bottom line is it’s more about running a blog or news site with good human-readable content and regular referrals by others via social media channels. Google has to note that you have good content and be well regarded by others in your sector. A bit like real life really…
Confused? Let us take care of it all
Few company owners have the time or passion for all this. They have a business to run and clients to keep happy. We therefore recommend business clients subcontract the website content chore to local copywriters or marketing companies. They don’t even have to be expert in online or technology, just understand the need to write good, relevant posts, regularly.
To get better rankings quickly, you may just need to hire a writer, journalist or marketer, not an SEO specialist, web design or development company…
We’ll work along side these wordsmiths or marketers, providing them full access to your WordPress website to safely add content and blog posts themselves. Our part will be to provide them monthly Google ranking reports and topic recommendations, as Jim outlined above – Helping your copywriter or marketer get the best ranking and traffic results. In some sectors social media plays a big part, in other sectors it does not – The reality is that every business and market differs.
If you need help with all this, drop us a line and we’ll find out who in your area can help.
[gravityform id=”2″ name=”Contact us” title=”false” description=”false”]