The Search engines are not standing still. Much as we would like them to tell us all what they do and how they assess and rate websites they are not going to. As a result there is no stability in page rankings: Your website might rank high one week and then disappear onto page 12 the next.
Achieving a decent page ranking requires constant updating and thus your current Search Engine Optimization techniques have to be kept up to date. Google Penguin 2.0 upset the apple cart so now we have to look at what the current SEO trends are demanding so that you can edit your web page to ensure that the techniques applied keep you up there.
So just what are the current trends:
Firstly it has become almost essential that your website get optimized for mobile devices. With the roll out of tablets and smart phones and more and more internet users browsing on mobile devices websites that are not mobile device friendly are missing a lot of traffic. This automatically drops them down the page rankings as traffic is still an essential factor in page ranking. So “Responsive design” in the creation of your web pages will massively increase your possible market and ability to reach many more possible browsers and most importantly shoppers.
This point is vital as many people using mobile devices are actively shopping with a credit card handy and are ready to conclude a deal if they find what they like.
Another factor that has become apparent is the downgrading of the links. Links of any description used to be highly regarded but Google now penalizes any site with low grade incoming links. Thus anyone with inbound links from identified link farms or bought links or spam type of activity are actively penalized. It is thus essential that your links are checked to ensure that they are valid and useful and those that are considered low grade are disavowed.
Having a keyword in your domain name is no longer an automatic Search Engine golden ticket. Having one is a good idea but the crawlers will still check the site to ensure that, whatever the keyword is, it is backed up by quality content and active “white hat” back links. So if one is about to register a new domain name ensure that the keyword you use in the name is well described in the page itself and furthermore do not just stuff keywords into the domain name as the search engines are averse to “Key word stuffing”.
Another important thing to bear in mind is that if one displays commercial advertisements on the site then there must be a balance with content displayed on the landing page without scrolling. This content must be in text so that the web crawlers can index it.
And lastly for this article becoming active in Social Media has distinct benefits for SEO. The social media sites generate massive amounts of traffic and being seen and being active on them will automatically increase one’s points in the page ranking race.
