Winning a first-page ranking by Google has become as challenging as finding your way to Oz.
Every marketer is looking for the Emerald City while every blogger is trying to get the Wizard of Google to award him with:
- the brains to understand all this stuff,
- the heart to communicate with the target audience
- the courage to keep working on it until it delivers us into
- the balloon that takes us all back to Kansas.
This is because Google harnesses at least 65 percent of all search engine activity within most of North America. In third-world countries like Africa – Google claims 95 percent of the market.
When it comes to Search Engine Optimization and SEO basics – what Google decides – paves the yellow brick road for you.
Here are 8 ways to look at the SEO fundamentals and what you must consider for ranking and traffic success.
1) Get To The First Page
For the first position on a search engine results page (SERP) you will automatically receive around 74 percent of all web-traffic looking for what you offer. 14 percent goes to the second and third positions.
This means almost almost 80 percent of viewers don’t bother to go to the third click down.So what exactly makes it possible to follow the yellow brick road into a balloon within the Emerald City?
2) Speaking The Language of Your Audience
Keywords are what your target audience is using to search for you. Shoppers looking for the “Wizard of Google” will be using “Wizard” and “Google” as their keywords.
Searchers looking for the “Cowardly Lion” will be using “Cowardly Lion” as primary keywords. It may be confusing, but it isn’t rocket science. The wizard both came and left in a hot air balloon. Using keywords often in blog content are simply…SEO basics.
3) Give Them What They Want by Knowing Who “They” Are
If your audience loves slang – use it. If they want to laugh – provide witty humor- if they want accurate information – give it to them accurately.
4) Use an Authoritative, Professional Voice within the Language of Your Audience
Using a professional “tuned to your audience” voice – signals that the site was created by a professional. If your web content is littered with grammatical errors and poor English (or any other language) the reader automatically understands the writer is not a professional and the content may be questionable.
If your audience is of a specific age group or educational level–be certain you understand them. Using slang like “Dude!” may not work–even when grammatically it all falls together perfectly.
5) Keyword Stuffing is No Longer Cool with the Wizard
High-quality content is the new cool. Professional, informative and well-written text is the standard Google has set for website-owning professionals. Text needs to make great sense. Long-tail keywords need to fit properly. “Follow the yellow brick road” as a long-tail keyword will only work if you make yellow bricks for road-paving.
6) SEO Basics: Ever-Fresh, Fast and Frequent
A slow-to-open site filled with graphics may take so long to load your shopper may decide to go back to the opening page. Outdated content can do the same. Fresh and frequent back-linked postings of accurate educational content is the best way to remain at the top-of-the-page.
7) Link to other Authoritative Sites
…and the wizard will find your reward inside his big bag. Go Daddy has over 980,000 + back-links pointing at them – no wonder they own a hot air balloon in Emerald City. Do not land your balloon in any link-farms. Verify your quality, then guest-blog for authoritative recognition.
8) Social Buzz and Google+
The hot air it takes to lift your company balloon into the skies of success contain the likes, pluses, clicks and positive-comments of your audience. That includes adding profiles and pages for the top social media destinations, including Google Plus and setting up Google Authorship.
These are facts that will be lifting many more balloons into the air of your marketing-future, and winning the Google game of search.
Put a smile on!
photo credit: Thomas Hawk | cc
photo credit: juliecampbell | cc