Search engine optimisation is an important part of your Digital Marketing strategy and Google organic traffic is a very important source of traffic and revenue for many businesses. There are two types of traffic channels associated with Google:
- Google Adwords/Google Pay Per Click: You pay for each click/visit received, and
- Google Organic (aka Google SEO traffic): Free traffic generated/good organic visibility.
Over the past twelve months, 88% of UK searchers use Google (StatCounter Global Stats, 2014). As such, losing your ranking on this search engine means losing exposure to vast numbers of potential customers.
Google has made many changes to the way they rank sites and have developed strict algorithms ensuring that only quality sites will be shown on top search spots. It is no longer a case of simply adding your keywords and uploading the site.
In 2012, Google started penalising sites that do not comply with their guidelines or employ black hat (spam) techniques to achieve better organic rankings and positions. A penalised site loses its rankings, its organic traffic and ultimately, sales.
There are various actions you can take to protect your site from Google’s penalties. Please note that these are tips for prevention so if you have already been hit with a penalty, then a different approach is needed.
Backlinks
Monitor your site’s back link profile. The best way to do this is by checking the links to your site using the Google Webmaster tool. It will show most of the domains that link to your site. Download these links and check to see if there are any domains that are unfamiliar and do not look authentic. Make a list of these domains and then contact these webmasters to remove the links to your site.
On Page Optimisation
Ensure your pages are optimised for your keywords and the services that you are providing. Give as much detail as you can about you and your services. Ensure that your Meta data is correctly set up, including Meta Descriptions, Page Titles and HTML header tags.
Add useful content to the site
Give as much as possible information to your users – keep this unique rather than copying from your suppliers’ sites or other sites. Duplicate content is a big ‘no-no’!
At teclan we can help with all of this. Call us today to see how we can help you.