Search engine optimization practices have changed a lot over the last few years. Here is a list of what you may wish to do now to respond to changes in how Google ranks websites:

Content is supreme

Google is focusing more and more on high quality content. In the past, content creators have fixated on keywords. Whilst keywords are still important, the content in which they appear must be highly relevant to the keywords.

Social media

Social signals measure your impact in social media. They include the number of people on Facebook who like your brand, the number of Twitter followers, and the number of people in your Google + circle. Social signals affect the search engine ranking of your main website.

Security

Due to the activities of hackers and high profile cases of password leaks, it is important that your site is secure. This means using security certificates to protect sensitive information. Lack of security could adversely affect your ranking by Google.

Mobile Friendly

Google wants your web site to be mobile friendly. Websites need to be responsive, adapting their display to the screen dimensions of phones and tablets.

Visual SEO

Though Google mainly indexes text content, it also looks at whether a site has visual content, including images and videos. Sites with visual elements can be given priority over mainly text sites.

Brand mentions

Including links from outside web sites to your web site has been a standard SEO tactic for many years. Brand mentions on other sites may not have direct links to your site, but Google will notice them and they will influence your rankings. The more visible your brand is on social media sites, including those that you do not control, the better.

Your search engine optimization strategy needs to evolve in response to changes at Google.

John Murray

John is every inch the wordsmith and loves a game of Scrabble above all else. With experience writing for newspapers, John’s time at university was spent studying Creative Writing – something which comes across in his love of the pun.