If the past year's over a dozen changes in Google algorithms has taught us anything, it's taught us that not only is content king, but it's queen, princes, and the rest of the royal court. Exhaustive studies of tens of thousands of high ranking sites have shown specific elements related to content that must be addressed on every site that wants to be competitive, and we'd like to apply that knowledge to your website.
Media Matters
Almost every high ranking site features media, be it images, white papers, videos, PDFs, or other viewable content. We are asking that for every page on your site that you wish to rank (and we'll help you with the list) that you provide us with, at a minimum, 6 ORIGINAL images. When we say original, photos that you buy from an online service like Shutterstock or some other site are not original images. Google (and the other search engines) have a short attention span. Once they've seen an image on another site, they pretty much ignore additional views of the same images. If you don't have images or can't get them, let us know and we'll see what we can do to assist you in obtaining or creating original content, based on your service plan.
Text Matters
In the "old days", a site with 500-700 words of ORIGINAL content was enough. By original, we mean content that isn't duplicated anywhere on the internet, including on other pages on your site. If you're using a "boilerplate", for example, on the bottom of every page, you can pretty much be certain that every time Google sees that "boilerplate" content it ignores it. Subtract that boilerplate text from your overall word count, and that's how much "original" content you have. The latest data we have from tens of thousands of high ranking sites is showing us that the number has gone up, and now Google (and other sites) are favoring pages that have 1,000 to 3,000 words of original content on each individual page.
Not only is the volume of content important, but how the content is prepared is equally important. If you think about the way that Siri changed the game for mobile devices, then you know that the era of "natural search" is upon us. People have no problem flipping on their Android, iPhone or Windows smart phone and asking it a question. If you present your data in a question / answer format, then you put yourself in the front of the line to answer those searches. Think about it, if someone enters a query "Why is reconstruction necessary in a mold remediation job" which do you think will rank better: 1) a site that has a heading like "Why is reconstruction necessary in mold remediation work" or 2) a site that has a heading like "The Best Reconstruction for Mold Remediation Jobs".
We will be reaching out to you in order to identify pages that need additional content, and will work with you to create that content in such a way as to rank well for those pages.
Relevant Links Matter
The search engines are all about providing comprehensive resources to searchers. The more satisfying the answers found on a particular search engine, the more likely someone is to stick with that search engine. The less satisfying the answers are, they more likely someone is looking for a better search engine. As a result, pages that provide media and content (discussed above) are important, but relevant links are also important. When your site is designed in such a way that relevant information can be easily identified and navigated to, this keeps people on your site, increases user engagement, and sends all kinds of important signals to Google and other search engines who monitor visitor behavior. If you don't have "related links" sections on your pages, now is the time to think about what pages may be related to other pages on your site, because we'll be asking you for those recommendations as we perform on page optimization on your site.
A Quick Recap
Because images matter, we will be asking for original pictures, drawings, videos or other rich media that you can contribute to your website. If you don't have them, we'll work with you to see what can be done about acquiring / creating original information for your site. Because content matters, we will be reviewing pages on your site that we feel have ranking potential, and we'll recommend rewrites for pages that we feel need additional content. We'll also work with you to identify the questions people are asking, and help you answer them. Finally, because relevant links matter, we'll be working with you to identify pages that are relevant within pages so that you can create an immersive site that is a good user experience.
We're thrilled to be working with you on your campaign, and we look forward to being an important component in your continuing business success.
