Put the Web to Work

We have several clients who have been bombarded by a barrage of companies promising instant search engine ranking results with top placement for their business.  These clients typically already rank great, but ask us for our advice on dealing with these calls.  With the recent overhaul of Google’s ranking algorithm, here are my top 5 tips on how you can rank in Google organically (for free!) and help you navigate through the sales noise. 1)  Website content is king – your best chance of ranking well is to have focused, easy to read content on your website that gives value to your visitors, clearly describes your service/product and is localized to the area you serve. 2)  Social media is critical – your website should be the center of a “spider web” surrounded by social media activity on several platforms.  Building fans/followers and posting interactive content will be noticed and rewarded by Google. 3)  Understand what your customer is searching...

Yep, Google has done it again.  On the 15 th anniversary date of the company, the world’s most used search engine announced a new ranking algorithm called “Hummingbird.”  It is designed to give users faster query results and it is focused on user actually wants versus individual search terms.  According to Google, this is the most dramatic algorithm change since 2001 and is a complete replacement of the old algorithm. So what does that mean for your business?  It means that if you are not creating original, deep, subject-relevant content often for your website and your social media channels, you may be falling behind.  The Hummingbird algorithm no longer uses the brute force approach of looking at each individual keyword in a Google search. Instead it looks at the query as a whole to process the meaning behind it. Hummingbird considers over 200 signals when determining a rank for a website. Traditional SEO practices are not necessarily dead … th...