One of our clients asked:
“I did a quick search for one of our products and we appear within the top results on Google, which is great. However, when I search for some of our other products, I don’t see our site listed, even for some components where we are the major national supplier. I’m not sure how the positioning on Google works. Can I assume you worked on the SEO for all our other products? How do websites move up on the Google list? Thanks!”
Great question! Your site’s placement in Google’s search results can change in the course of a day, or even an hour, but for the most part it is a gradual climb. It requires consistent maintenance and activity to hold a top spot. Every page of a website should be search engine optimized with meta title tags, meta descriptions, and keyword density—but that’s only part of the puzzle.
Be the Best Solution to the Problems Your Prospects Are Trying to Solve
Voice search and conversational language have led to advancements in Google’s ability to understand a user’s intent.
When discussing “google rank”, it’s important to remember that a search engine’s sole purpose is to provide users with the best answer to their question. Search algorithms are designed to find websites that can provide users with answers that are relevant and accurate. Google spends extensive time and resources on advancing the capability of their search algorithms to understand what users are looking for—not just the words in the search bar but the intent behind them.
Factors such as voice search for hands-free, voice controlled devices and searches using “conversational” language have led to a multitude of advancements in Google’s capability to understand a user’s intent. According to a recent article from Hubspot, “These changes have forced marketers to adapt their search strategy to focus less on individual keywords and shift to a topic-centric content strategy, especially for content sitting at the top of their marketing funnel.”
What does this mean for your website? Basically, it means that in order to “rank” well in search results, your page and your website must be the best solution to the problem your prospects are trying to solve.
How Does Applied Help Clients Rise Up in Search Results?
When we are trying to help a client improve their position in organic search results, we start by identifying the specific topics and/or products they want to work on. We then consider ways we can create content that will not only apply specifically to the sale of the product but also help solve problems and answer questions about related concepts. Adding informative content that is relevant to the topic or product reinforces your authority on that subject and increases inbound, outbound, and internal links.
For example, we recently published a page about Air Cargo Ball Transfers for lutco.com. We began with a general landing page about the topic and that was a good start, but as soon as we added a press release with backlinks and additional content, we saw improvement. By adding another content piece that provides an educational resource, we can further improve their position and reinforce lutco.com‘s “credibility” with Google. (Even the links in this paragraph are contributing in their own small way!)
Google considers numerous factors in milliseconds to understand a user’s intent and produce results. Just a few of the factors that could affect your overall SEO success in addition to the technical optimization of a page:
- how recently your content was published or revised
- how long visitors stay on the page (another great reason to produce educational resource articles– it keeps your audience engaged and reduces your bounce rate!)
- the number of backlinks from other websites and social media to your page (this indicates to Google that other people have found the information on your website useful and relevant, which boosts your credibility)
Google has become incredibly sophisticated over the last 5-10 years. It is continuously evolving to better understand the intent of a user’s question so that it can provide a useful answer. Producing a variety of content types that expand on related topics helps to ensure we are covering the target topic comprehensively and contributes to the ranking of search results for broad, highly-competitive terms, as well as addressing more nuanced long-tail inquiries.