This week’s blog post comes from our friend Uwe Schmidt of agency Industrie-Contact AG in Germany, which is part of PRGN, a global consortium of independent public relations agencies. Buchanan PR was a founding member of PRGN 15 years ago.
Google has changed the search algorithms three times between 2011 and 2013. The following tips will help you to land as far as possible above on the searches hit list:
1. Constantly create new user-oriented content (Content) on your own website. This means that visitors will stay longer on your website and Google shows that their side has a high relevance for certain topics.
2. Ensure that the content coming from you best links to your site (Back links) – will be published on reputable websites such as online magazines and communities guides. This is also for Google a central indicator of the relevance of their Internet pages.
3. Do not pay for the mass positioning of the same content (Duplicate Content) or back links on sites such as pseudo press portals or web directories that were obviously created only to distort Google results in favour of certain pages. Google ignores such entries or even “punishes” companies appearing now in such “spam pages.”
4. Design your website content, structure and technique so that Google can analyze all the content easily and classify it thematically. This is achieved, among other things, by defining and integrating the best possible keywords, creating a user-friendly structure and eliminating hard-analyzable elements such as very large images and flash animations.
5. Take care when providing new content on your site that subject matter and scope “fit” for your company. Google could otherwise classify your online appearance as a spam page. A small specialized business, for example, should not publish news on a wide range of subjects every day.
6. If you lack expertise or staff, you can be supported by experienced agencies for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Public Relations (PR). While an SEO agency is a great way to lay the foundations (point 4), PR agencies are inherently professionals in providing customer-driven, high-quality content and place it on reputable websites (Point 1 + 2).
7. Choose SEO and PR agencies that know the respective other side and work together efficiently and effectively. This guarantees an optimal strategy, an optimal conversion and an optimal Google ranking.