SEO Secrets: 10 Basics of Understanding Google’s Algorithm

When it comes to internet traffic, you must understand how to garner the best SERPs in order not just to make sales but to also get the traffic your brand’s website needs.

In today's digital world, it’s more important than ever to understand that your competition isn’t just made up of other businesses selling similar products; anyone can outrank you online and take away potential sales.

Great SEO adheres to Google's best practices to get your content listed at the top. No one knows what these variables are unless they work at Google. However, the following are some guidelines that can help you achieve your goal.

1. Quality is king

You may have heard "Content is King". However, you can create as much content as you want if you think about it, but it won't necessarily be any good. Quality, not quantity, is the keyword here. Quality reigns supreme. This concept should be obvious and ingrained in your mind, and it should take precedence over everything else when creating different content.

When you're writing a blog post or an article, always keep your audience in mind:

• What are their interests?
• What do they want to read?
• What are they looking for?
• How can you make their experience as enjoyable as possible?

These are all questions that need to be answered before putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). Simply churning out a lot of content won't do you any good if it's not good quality.

The best way to achieve this is by researching keywords that relate to your topic or niche. Then find out what people are searching for in relation to those keywords and write about them! You'll find that if you research thoroughly enough and then write relevant content based on what people want, it will boost your SEO efforts and attract more traffic from search engines like Google and Bing.

2. Who is sharing?

The quality of your content is one of the most important variables when it comes to your website's SEO. If you produce high-quality content, you'll see a rise in popularity, which in turn will lead to more people linking or sharing your content. This will help to improve your site's SEO.

There's no magic bullet for getting your content shared widely online, but there are a few things you can do to help increase the chances. First and foremost, make sure your content is high quality and relevant to your audience. You can also partner with influential people to share your content and use paid marketing to spread the word even further. In the end, though, the best way to get your content seen is through organic growth - through word of mouth.

Google values content that is widely shared by users. If your content is being shared by many people, it’s likely to be high quality and Google will rank it higher in search results.

3. Crosslinking your brand

A great way to show relevance to your brand is through crosslinking. If you have accounts on different social networks, linking them all together will let Google know they belong to the same entity.

If you have no content, don't crosslink. For example, if you link your Facebook page to your Twitter page but your Twitter profile has no tweets, this creates a poor user experience. If you link your platforms, make sure they have content.

4. Keywords are queen

Keyword selection is a carefully analyzed process that takes into account the user's intent. User intent is determined by assessing the searcher's search query, location, and other attributes like whether or not they're logged in. To make it easier for your website to be found organically, you should ensure that important keywords are used throughout your site, in both the headers and the main content.

Just placing keywords on your site without considering their relevancy won't generate any value; instead, you'll increase the bounce rate and end up losing money in the long run.

The title of your content is a significant set of keywords, so it’s important to do the following:

• Keep it short and sweet.
• It should pique your curiosity enough to make you want to click it.
• Have words that can be used as both search terms and keywords.

To achieve this, use keywords in your title that visitors are likely to type into a search engine.

5. Write an accurate meta description

The meta description tag in your HTML code provides a description of your content to let search engines and visitors know what your page is about.

Create a meta description that is both factual and optimized. This description tag allows Google to properly index your page, but it’s important to ensure it’s accurate. If you try to deceive search engines, this will work against you.

The meta description should be between 155-160 characters long. You should also avoid any writing mistakes or typos, which could cause a bad user experience for users visiting your site.

6. Use keywords in naming images

When it comes to SEO, it's critical to have descriptive, keyword-rich file names.

The picture file names inform Google and other search engine crawlers about the image's subject matter.

Since relevance is crucial, make sure the file name, caption, and surrounding text appropriately reflect the image.

7. The depth and conciseness of your content matters

When the intent of the search query requires it, long-form material resonates well with readers. People are increasingly using the internet to learn new skills, make comparisons, or gain a thorough understanding of a subject.

Google dislikes "thin content" in general, which means web content that is excessively paginated or overpowered with pop-up advertising is penalized by Google. Google prioritizes the user experience, but it also considers the value of a site's content and the authority or trust factor assigned to the author. Meeting the customer's requirements and wishes is the first step in gaining new customers.

The depth and conciseness of your content matters for several reasons:

• First, it helps to ensure that your readers understand your message. Concise content is easier to read and digest than dense text.
• Second, depth and conciseness also play a role in how search engines rank your website. The more relevant and well-written your content is, the higher your site will appear in search results.
• Finally, good content is simply more engaging than weak or poorly written content. Your readers will appreciate the effort you put into creating quality, informative content, and they’ll be more likely to return to your site in the future.

8. User experience (UX) is a factor

A well-designed website is important as it ensures your visitors can find their way around your site easily and it helps create a professional brand identity. If your website is difficult to navigate or full of broken links, it will reflect poorly on your company.

Likewise, if your website isn’t optimized for mobile devices, you’ll lose out on a large segment of potential customers. UX is a vital part of website design and shouldn’t be overlooked. If you take the time to create a well-designed website, you’ll be rewarded with happy customers and increased sales. To make things easier, you can follow a best practices UX checklist so you cover all the right elements.

9. Limit ads and ad placements

Yes, businesses and websites need to make money, and often, some of that money comes from advertisements. It's an unavoidable evil.

However, when you place adverts between your content, it does two things: it confuses the viewers into thinking the ad is part of the content, and it irritates them.

What's the solution? Place ads in areas where they won't interfere with the user experience. Put them in sidebars, in the footer, or in dedicated ad spaces. And make sure they're marked as ads, so users know what they're looking at.

10. Consistently produce content

If you want your brand to stay relevant, you need to continually create fresh content. This doesn't mean you have to publish something new every day, but you should be consistent in your output.

Google values fresh content, so if you can keep your site up-to-date with fresh, original content, you'll be more likely to rank higher in search results.

Search engines will crawl your site and index it regularly. They will then use this information to provide relevant results to users’ search queries. To make the most of this, you should:

Make sure your links can be crawled

Only links that have a href attribute can be followed by Google. Google's crawlers will not follow links that use other forms. Because of staged click events, Google can’t follow links without a href tag or other tags that act as links.

Managing your crawl better

If your site is especially big (hundreds of millions of pages that change regularly, or perhaps tens of millions of pages that frequently change), Google will not be able to crawl it as frequently as you'd like, so you may need to direct Google to your most important pages.