Search Engine Optimization: How can a legitimate business compete online?

Matt Cutts is the head of Google’s webspam team, and he frequently answers user-submitted questions related to search engine results and the quality of those results. In this video, Matt answers the following question:

Ranking being so valuable, how does a true business owner that offers a legitimate business supposed to gain the traffic “deserved” over those that specialize in creating traffic? Is it supposed to be this hard for us?

Matt explains several key components that we all should be considering as business owners with a website.

(Matt can never just come right out and share the secrets of Google algorithms, but we consider what he say’s as ‘straight from the horse’s mouth’, so, you know….we are paying attention.)

Make sure your website doesn’t suck.

I love this one since we build websites, but really, he’s talking about more than just design.

Is your website usable? How does it look on a mobile device?

Google officially sanctioned mobile responsive design a while ago. From a quality standpoint, mobile responsive websites offer users on mobile devices the same information they would get on the full site. There are no ‘abbreviated’ mobile experiences.

61% of people have a better opinion of brands when they offer a good mobile experience (source: latitude via Mobify).

Do you provide useful, high-quality information and resources for your customers?

Providing high quality information is the heart of Content Marketing. This could be a blog, or whitepapers, special reports, tips and tricks.

There are so many reasons to make a commitment to publish and distribute useful content regularly. The most important ones being:

• Stay Top of Mind with Your Customers: If customers are hearing from you on a regular basis with useful content and resources, you stay top-of-mind with them. When it comes time for a referral, they haven’t forgotten who you are.
• Position Yourself as an Expert: Publishing content and sharing your expertise helps position you as an expert in your field.
• Improve SEO:  By creating content on your website which is naturally keyword rich, you are reinforcing the SEO terms you are trying to win. Also, search engines responds favorably to sites that are update regularly and have recently published relevant content.

Engage Your Customers

You have customers…think about how you are engaging those customers.

• Mailing List/Email Marketing
• Real World Events
• Local Promotions

This is just good business advice, but it stand’s to reason that Google is looking for cues that your website is being used to engage your customers. This might be as simple as using your company news page to keep customers informed of what’s going on such as events and promotions.

Be Dynamic and Respond

This might be code for ‘use your website to engage and communicate’…it’s not just a brochure anymore.