You wouldn’t assume that after losing 10 pounds that you could keep the weight off without some maintenance. It takes effort to stay out of those stretchy pants! Likewise, the easiest mistake to make regarding SEO (besides not doing it at all) is to ignore the maintenance.
You perform the initial settings and technical tasks, then step back for the search engines to begin inspecting and using the content they received during the indexation. But what happens next?
You can do three SEO success secrets to rank better on Google after SEO has been performed on your site.
Success Secret # 1: Keep it fresh.
Although we really enjoy re-designing websites, that’s not the context here. Keep it fresh with original content. (“Original”, meaning, don’t just copy in other peoples’ blogs, images, and content from other sites.)
Google prioritizes relevant, credible and helpful information when providing results in Search. Regularly updated content is one of the ways Google detects that a website is still relevant, so they’ll be more likely to list your page as a Search result when it’s applicable to the user’s query.
We recommend focusing on specific content like image galleries, blogs, newsletters, portfolios, trainings, audio files, videos, etc. that can be used strategically with your social media accounts.
For example, if your company specializes in remodeling camper trailers, you can keep the website gallery updated with images of your best projects. Use an impressive before and after photo or edited video tour on your Instagram feed, comment on the project, and invite people to see your complete project portfolio, so that it’s continuously generating traffic back to your website.
If an image or video gallery isn’t applicable or possible for your business, try to find something of quality that’s shareable and relates to your product or service to create that loop:
publish on website -> post on social media channels -> visitors go to your website
That fresh, quality content on your website plus the visitor traffic loop going from the social media accounts directly back to the website can be a very effective way to show Google you are relevant. Remember to use your social media channels in conjunction with your site, not instead of your website. You’ll miss Google’s help that way.
And, if you’re not doing the social media thing for your business, that’s okay. Keeping fresh content on your website is absolutely a win.
PRO TIP: When you or your website designer are adding new images, make sure the “Alt Text” field is always used. The purpose of alternative text is to describe how an image is related to the content of a document or web page. Two awesome things happen next – the image can then get indexed by Google as another piece of relevant content, and visually impaired visitors will be able to hear their screen reader software describe what it is, providing an even more engaging user experience.
Success Secret # 2: Get Google reviews and comment on them.
In a way this creates fresh content, too. Your Google Business Profile linked to your website will be showing activity, and – just as important – it checks off the creditability box.
Are you asking for Google reviews? If you need some help getting started or to re-focus with some fresh ideas on how to do it, read this article.
Success Secret # 3: Re-index your website regularly.
There’s no central registry for the internet, so Google maintains an index for itself to use. Once content is known by Google, it can be added to its index, which then can be offered to users when they enter a query in Search. That means that until Google knows this information exists, it won’t turn up as a relevant Search result. It’s invisible. New websites, pages and updated content are happening all the time, and re-indexation is a way for Google to discover these changes have happened.
Google does have a way of automatically “crawling” the internet in a continuous hunt for new content that it may add to the index when it’s found; however, the timing of this happening is not exact or the same between any given website. Some known factors about crawling are that mega-sized sites with constant activity (like news outlets) can happen quickly, and other kinds of content and sites may take a month or even more.
So, conclusion? Most of us are not mega companies and mega websites, so let’s not wait for Google.
Get any updates and new content submitted proactively so it’s not invisible in the Search process.
How long has it been since you’ve taken the pulse of your website? Contact us for a free analysis and consultation, and we will make an honest recommendation based on 15 years of experience. Need more social proof? Check out one of our 150+ Five-Star Google reviews.
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