Your Website is Full of Quality Content, now what?

If the past few years has taught companies anything it is that SEO is a moving target.  With so many new changes introduced by Google alone SEO consultants are finding their services are being sought after more than ever.  Many companies simply do not have the in-house know how or time needed to make all the new adjustments to existing sites that outsourcing to the experts is on the increase.

Updates Result in Dramatic Changes and Hours of Extra Work

Thanks to Google Panda and the other recent algorithm updates many companies have had to completely revamp their sites to make sure the spiders look favourably on the content.  With all of the poor content banished for your web pages you should find that your site is able to escape the painful drop in visibility on the search results pages.  After you have improved the content to include original and useful information you may be wondering how some companies are outperforming others.

Feedback is More Important than Ever

The answer is that they are focusing on some of the other changes in the way that search engines are ranking websites.  When Google introduced the ‘Panda’ update in the UK on April 11 they also made a further announcement.  On the Google Webmaster blog they stated that they were including user feedback signals which have been carefully created in order to assist users to achieve better results using search.

One of the ways in which the dominating search engine giant is gathering feedback is by using information obtained from sites which were being blocked by users.  Combine this with the news that Bing is now working with Facebook and allowing ‘likes’ to be used in their search rankings it is worth making sure your site is pleasing the people who visit.

User Satisfaction Needs to Be in the Forefront of Website Design and Content

One mistake that is costing companies their rank position is that they are focused too hard on pleasing search engines and forgetting customer satisfaction.  It is now vital that you design your site with the visitors in mind.  By considering the user it is easier to satisfy their needs and result in favourable feedback.  Other tips include:

• Avoiding duplicate content
• Resist the temptation of overloading web pages with keywords
• Build up regular posts using a blog
• If you are using pictures, ensure they are optimised properly, give your images a meaningful name and ensure your alt text matches the image as well and DON’T leave that blank. Now search engines are indexing images for image search you could be missing out on a trick

With so much activity happening in the world of SEO you may be left confused as to what steps need to be taken in order to satisfy visitors and the search engines.  A site audit can be beneficial to highlight all the areas which are working and expose the places which are not.  In addition to this you can discover exactly how your site is ranking in the search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.

All of your marketing techniques can be evaluated to ensure that you are achieving everything possible through your SEO campaign.  An audit is recommended at regular intervals, and especially when updates have been introduced.  With Google already rolling out multiple improvements in the last couple of months there is little doubt that they will be stopping there.