Two simple tips from our Google gurus
Let’s make this answer super simple…CALL US!
We’re kidding!
All jokes aside…
Rankings are determined based on two primary categories followed by sub categories. The two primary categories are:
1) Textual SEO i.e. – “context” of a page, i.e – your content strategy
The primary facet of textual SEO is keyword strategy – strategically positioning the right words and phrases in distinct places on pages to help Google recognize content, ensuring users find their way to your webpage easily.
Our number one recommendation concerning keyword strategy is to “tell it how it is.”
In other words, there is a time and place to wordsmith the product or service you are offering, such as on the product packaging or on social media. But when it comes to search engines, Meta information (much like our attention span) is getting shorter and shorter. 70 characters used to be acceptable before truncation, but now we would challenge you to google a product or service and show us an organic listing with more than 65 characters in the title. Moreover, the general consensus is that the first two words in your title are the most powerful for ranking on a particular search term. Couple that with ending your page titles with your brand name to continually build awareness and you’re on the right path.
So, if you have an unfortunately long brand name, you are likely fighting an uphill battle. It may be a good idea to deploy your brand as an acronym and get right to the point with keywords whenever possible.
2) Technical
All of the code based optimizations that allow crawling bots (and people) to navigate your site make up this second category.
Basically technical SEO encompasses well, everything. No two sites are exactly the same when it comes to the issues that they face. Poor performance can come from a variety of sources such as the server speed and hosting environment, reference links that were once good but have since died, or limitations surrounding the website framework and what you may be trying to accomplish.
Amidst the mountain of technical issues you may face there is none larger than mobile optimization…at least in our opinion.
Google has been rolling out mobile first indexing since 2016 and as of March 2021 all sites on Google have been switched. In layman’s terms, Google is utilizing the mobile version of your site to rank your pages on SERPs (search engine results pages.) So, even if you are an outlier and 90% of your demographic will visit your site on a desktop computer, if your site has mobile capability (most sites do) then Google will use the performance of your site on a mobile device as a component of your ranking.
From our team to yours, this means all images and videos need to be compressed and responsive, all code needs to be minified (removal of unnecessary characters), and any features that hinder performance like popups and social sharing widgets should be removed.
Thankfully there are smart people out there who can help. And a few of the best work here at WRL.
If you’re looking to refine your digital marketing strategy, contact us today!
