If your website is struggling to get organic traffic from Google Search, there are three basic areas you should focus on, according to Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan:
Keep creating high quality content – do what you think is best for your readers. Diversify your traffic sources and promote your content through multiple channels. Build an engaged audience that reaches you directly or through email and social media.
None of this is new, none of this is easy, and none of this advice will make people happy.
What this basically means is that you should think beyond Google and just SEO if you want to be successful in Google Search with your SEO efforts.
That means. The days of SEO hacks and loopholes are fast coming to an end. The future of SEO will be won by those who focus on all the elements of SEO that matter and play along.
Why we care People continue to be frustrated with Google’s advice, which is always some variant of “create useful content”. However, Google can’t tell you everything you need to do to create useful content or help you rank it. Your job is to figure out how to grow an audience. Expecting Google Search to send you traffic or give you exposure is not a strategy.
Make great content. According to Sullivan, creating content that resonates with your expected readers is crucial. But it’s not the only factor either:
“As I said before, I think everyone should focus on doing what they think is best for their readers. I know it can be confusing when people get a lot of advice from different places and then they also hear about all these things that Google is supposedly doing, or not doing, and they really just want to focus on the content. If you’re lost, again, focus on that. This is your touchstone.”
Sullivan referenced some advice from Mike King, CEO of iPullRank:
“Make great content and promote it well; I’m kidding, but I’m also serious. Google has continued to give this advice and we resist making it not actionable. For some SEOs, it’s out of their control. After reviewing these features that give Google its advantages, it’s pretty obvious that making better content and promoting it to the audiences it resonates with will have the best impact on these metrics. Link metrics and content features will certainly get you pretty far, but if you really want to win at Google in the long run, you need to do things that continue to merit ranking.”
– Algorithm Secrets: Google Search’s internal engineering documentation leaked
Websites affected by a recent Google algorithm update could see some relief from a future Google core update. But, as he has done before, Sullivan acknowledged that it could be a Google problem:
“It could also be that, as I said here, it’s us in some of these cases, not the sites, and that part of us that posts future updates is doing a better job in some of these cases.”
Diversify traffic sources. Avoid relying on a single source of traffic, i.e. Google Search. Having multiple traffic sources is beneficial. But again, this will not guarantee SEO success. Here’s what Sullivan said:
“Regarding the issue of offsite effort, I think from what I know before working at Google Search, as well as my time on the search ranking team, is that one of the ways to succeed with Google Search is to think outside the box.” “Great sites with content that people like get traffic in many ways. People go straight to them. They come through email referrals. They arrive via links from other sites. They get mentions on social networks. “This doesn’t mean you have to get tons of social mentions, or tons of email mentions because they’ll somehow magically rank you better on Google (they don’t, as far as I know). It just wants say you’re probably building a normal site in the sense that it’s not just for Google, but for people. And that’s what our ranking systems are trying to reward, good content made for people.”
Build an audience. Sullivan ran two websites before joining Google, including Search Engine Land. Both started from scratch, but successfully grew into notable, authoritative, reliable and profitable entities.
How does this part work? Sullivan shared a personal example:
“I like to go on excursions. I found a great site for single person tours a few years ago when I was looking for information on a particular tour and signed up for the newsletter. I am now a regular and connected customer, so to speak. “Search is a great introduction, in a way, to what can become a long-term relationship with readers and customers. “My main goal was always for them to connect with those after they arrived: email, channels, social media.
In a separate response, he also added that “developing multiple ways to reach an audience is a good thing. It’s not difficult or expensive to have email lists or social accounts. It’s a long-standing marketing practice.”
Variety of signals. It’s the eternal chicken and egg problem in SEO. People can’t find your great content because Google doesn’t rank it.
In light of the Google leak and revelations about Navboost and user interactions (clicks) influencing rankings, Sullivan said that “no one would ever rank first if that was supposedly all that mattered”:
“[B]because how would a new site (including your site, which would have been new at one point) ever be seen? The reality is that we use a variety of different classification signals including, but not limited to, “anonymized and aggregated interaction data”…”
Sullivan Publications. You can see them on X – here, here, here i here.
[ad_2]
Source link
