Google Search Redirection – Smartphone Functionality
February 12, 2014Tools To Help You Optimize Your Site for Search Engines
February 16, 2014Search engine algorithms and tools are updated every now and then. With changes being made every day to various options and features, it becomes difficult to keep a track of what the algo looks for now and what we should be doing to be in the best books of Google search! Here are few of the latest updates which point out what SEO optimization actually looks for in 2014.
1. Relevance matters more than keywords:
Earlier, search engines concentrated more on keywords in the webpage. The more keywords you have, the more likely is your page to show up in the top few search results. But the latest search results do not look for keyword. It displays results based on the content relevancy. For e.g. if you search for a simple word, say bike, it gives you results to mechanic showrooms nearby, service centers available for you etc, even if the word is not present much in the result. Relevancy matters more than keyword ratio in the latest updates.
2. Keyword Data Encryption:
Google announced earlier that they would encrypt search results so that the search data could be protected. This was a big hit for the bloggers as they would not be able to see what are the keywords entered by people and thus, they would not be able to implement those in their pages. A workaround for this is available with AdWords as it allows bloggers to see which pages are gaining more traffic. This way, you may not know what exact keywords are used by the others, but you will get a fairly good idea about how optimization can be done and how you can rank your page in the top few. Google also allows some organic keywords to be viewed which can help you decide the keywords for your page. Also, other search engines like Yahoo! and Bing have not encrypted search data yet. So that is a boon a midst the latest updates from Google search.
3. Importance of reviews:
Earlier, advertisements were just displayed on the pages and no reviews were available in the search result. Now, Google has given advertisers an option to write a small review of around 60-70 words. This can also be displayed in the search page result in one line so that people searching with keywords related to your products can also see a small review before they even visit your page. This is an added advantage for many advertisers as they can promote their products well.
4. Linking your way up the ladder:
Links are a great way to help promote your page and get the page a high rank in the search results. You cannot obviously make inbound links to your own page as Google does not approve that. But you can provide links from your social network pages to your site so that users get an access to your webpage and it also gains popularity and rank in the top few list.
5. Keep the page update to date and fresh:
Google always looks for newer content or last updated content. If you develop your site and leave it untouched for a long time then the site is termed as old and may not be noticed by anyone at all. Instead, once your site is developed, spend some time weekly to just curate the content in the page or to re-write some contents so that the page is always up to date and will always be noticed as fresh content. Initially it may seem a tedious process to keep updating and you may not even know what to update every week. But as you get into the flow of it, things become much easier and you will end up spending just half an hour or so to get this work done.
6. Keep yourself well versed with the latest SEO updates:
SEO algorithms keep changing very often. Though it is difficult to keep track of all changes, yet, if it is done diligently, then it becomes very helpful to keep your site accessible to all Google search results related to your content.
Site developers put a lot of effort to create and share their content in the best possible way they can. But with changes happening across the web every other day, developers cannot just rest once they have finished the development work. You need to keep updating the content as per the latest rules so that you site is always noticed and it ranks high in search results. So once you publish your content, you could relax a bit, but not for long – you need to keep the updates going to get your site going.