With over half the world’s population now online and internet search the first step for new enquiries, your search engine position has never been so vital.There are lots of myths about how Google assesses your site. The most popular misconceptions are below…
1. Your Website’s Age – Google cares how much your content helps people. If you have credible content and good reciprocal links, Google will look at you favourably. It doesn't matter whether you have achieved this over 10 years or just two years. In fact, if you’ve achieved good credibility quickly, this may work in your favour in Google’s eyes.
2. Using Google’s Services – whether you’re using Gmail or Google+ will not have a direct impact upon your search engine positioning.
3. Social Media Engagement – the number of page shares on social media and the size of your social media accounts (followers, likes) are not picked up by Google.
4. Bounce Rate & Visit Times – whether people leave your site quickly after just one page view (bounce) or stay longer does not affect Google’s view of your site. It’s easy to get fixated on bounce rates. If people find what they need very quickly and on their first landing page, they don't need to stay longer. The most common example is looking for your phone number. This pushes your bounce rate up – however you’ve done a good job!
5. Your Programming Technology – your coding simply doesn't matter to Google.
6. Value Hosting – you may have heard snobby comments about websites that are hosted with the bargain providers. As long as this doesn’t affect how quickly your site loads, Google doesn’t care who your hosting provider is – or how much you pay.
7. Headlines – you will see that your headlines can be formatted as H1, H2 H3 etc. Does H1 have more prominence in Google’s eyes? No.
8. Page Titles – you’ll see a variety of separators in page titles displayed in internet search results. Some people use the pipe, other prefer a hyphen. Does Google have a preference? No.
9. Guarantees - remember that no-one can ethically guarantee you a position on page one of Google. Watch out for the scams.
Now we’ve debunking some of the search engine myths, what does Google truly care about? Content, content… content. Think about what your current and potential customers want to know. Investigate what they search for online and plan your web pages, blogs and guest articles accordingly.Help Google to help your target market. Get it right and everyone wins.
Would you like to know more? Ask us about our half day course about ‘Getting More Traffic From Google’ or contact us to have a no-obligation chat.