- Today on The Journey,
we're talking about how Google's new algorithm changes
can and will affect your page rankings
as well as give you some steps you can take to stay on top.
Google announced that it postponed the roll out
of the page experience updates
specifically a ranking change
to be a gradual roll-out that won't start
until mid June, 2021.
It won't be fully rolled out until the end of August.
But if you're trying to stay ahead of the algorithm,
sounds confusing and maybe a bit overwhelming, don't worry.
We're here to help just share and run through
the latest SEO techniques that will keep your sites visible.
- All right, so let's talk about the update.
What's going on?
Well, basically Google plans to update its search algorithm
to include a factor called page experience.
The page experience includes all aspects
of how users interact with a webpage
and how easy or painful it is for them.
- But what does this have to do with your SEO?
Well, SEO is a crucial element in your online presence
whether you believe it or not your website
will not succeed if you don't optimize their SEO strategy
and here's why.
75% of internet users don't go beyond
the first page of Google and over 81% of consumers
search for a product or service online
before making a purchase.
And now with those statistics in mind,
we've got some ways to keep on top
of these changing trends and updates.
- Starting with first, become a user experience expert.
Google uses metrics called Core Web Vitals
and they are user-centered metrics that put more emphasis
on user experience
and it's broken down into three measurements.
First Input Delay, FID for short.
Two, Cumulative Layout Shifts, CLS
and three Largest Content Full Paint, LCP.
- These things will measure how fast the page loads,
how soon it gets interactive
and it's stability while loading.
And we recommend testing these features
on your website to really see how they work
and an excellent way to get Core Web Vitals report
is just to use the free tool page speed insights.
- And to no surprise, mobile friendliness is key.
In fact, 75% of internet users
will access the internet solely
through mobile devices by 2025.
You guys, that's not too far away.
And according to the update,
Google will now be crawling
the mobile version of a website first
before the desktop version.
So make sure that all the content on a site
including images and videos are optimized
for mobile to avoid being penalized by Google
and then lose rankings.
- Then do your keyword research.
The use of keywords in SEO ranking,
it's not a new thing,
but unlike in the past keyword density,
no longer factors into SEO
and keyword density is just stuffing your page
as much as possible with your chosen keywords.
But you have to invest in keyword research to really ensure
that you use keywords that can drive traffic and boost sales
for your business.
A couple of tips on using keywords definitely
wanna use long-tail and target keywords
that match your business.
Google Search Console can definitely help with this.
And then consider the intent.
Besides using SEO tools to find the right keywords to use,
you must understand the intent of your users.
With the right intent
even a low volume keyword can give excellent results.
- And website security is a must.
You've heard us talk about this on The Journey.
So Google is increasing its value of website security
when determining a ranking.
As a website owner, what you need to do,
you need to add specialized features
that are specifically security features,
including plugins and SSL certificates
and that will help to make sure
that your SEO strategy is successful
and more than ever, more than ever,
people need to feel safe on a website
otherwise they will leave the site for another
which will of course drop the ranking
on the search engine results page for you.
- Let's talk about search intent.
Arguably Google's main purpose is to provide content, based
on the user's intentions.
If I wanna search cool things to do in my area,
I'm going to search and
I hope to find cool things to do in my area.
And to help with this,
Google uses Bidirectional Encoder Representations
from Transformers algorithm.
That is a mouthful but we'll just call it BERT
to promote user focused optimization.
So if content is not BERT friendly, it's not going to rank
or maintain its rankings.
To optimize your content for Google's BERT,
perform a Google search
for the keyword you wanna rank
before creating the content
just to ensure that it matches the searcher's intent.
- And be sure to include my favorite video content.
So with over one billion users globally,
YouTube makes an excellent marketing platform.
Hey, we're here right now.
And if you haven't started to use videos in marketing,
you guys are majorly missing out.
Now, the first thing you need to think about
when optimizing video content is the video channel name
and description, of course you shouldn't overload
your video description with keywords
but include an excellent description
of what the video channel is all about.
Help you target the right audience,
help you get found. And as for your videos,
the best way to optimize YouTube SEO
is just make a list of topics that you want to discuss
and then do your keyword research.
- Yeah, I mean, that's what we do here on The Journey.
Next tip we have for you is to optimize for voice search.
And according to Google, Google knows all, right? About 27%
of internet users are using voice search on mobile.
And since most are likely to use voice search
when asking a question, it'll be best to optimize
some of your content with questions
like when, what and how.
It's important to note that when a user makes
a query using voice search,
they'll be giving a single answer and not a list.
In most cases, the answer will come from a snippet
and in other cases from webpage.
This is super important.
I came to the realization that voice search
was incredibly important as I'm watching my daughter grow up
and how acclimated she is to the phone,
she's learning how to type and text and all that good stuff
but she's using voice for almost everything.
And as generations grow up with the technology we have
that's gonna be the go-to
I'm just gonna search and talk something.
So making sure this is part of your strategy now,
will definitely set you up for success in long run.
- And if there's one SEO trend that will never change,
it's the need to produce relevant and original content,
also valuable content for your audience.
There's no shortcut here but it's so important
because if users don't find your content valuable,
they will leave your page.
They'll find another option.
Besides, an increase in bounce rate
will hurt your digital authority so your ranking
and the best approach toward this is to develop
a content strategy with your target audience needs in mind
and your content should be interactive
and touch on their needs.
- And although content length is not a ranking factor,
long-form content has been found to earn more links
and shares, which is a ranking factor.
In fact, Neil Patel like stresses long-form content
over almost anything.
And one study found that long form content and that's really
anything over 7,000 words
can drive four times more traffic than short reads.
So anything between like 900 to 1,200 words.
Plus long-form content allows you to gain expertise,
authority and trust,
all of which are crucial in content marketing.
After all only people with authority and credibility
can create long form original content on a given topic.
- And add alt tags.
I actually just stressed this in a webinar recently.
Today alternative tags form a crucial part
of any excellent SEO and alt text refers
to image descriptions that Google crawlers use
to scan through the images to determine
whether they match your content or not.
Besides Google, alt texts are crucial
for virtually impaired visitors who use screen readers
to interpret a webpage is visual content.
- And don't forget about Emma's favorite,
focusing on local SEO.
As the name suggests, local SEO is designed
to direct visibility for websites
and it's specific geographical locations.
The good news is many people are searching
for local information on Google.
The first step towards local SEO is to sign up
for Google My Business and include your current address,
contact information and operating hours.
Long tail keywords are exceptionally important for SEO.
So you should really optimize the site
with keywords to boost your chances of ranking locally.
So a couple of examples here for you would be like,
best hotels in Phoenix Arizona,
best San Diego luxury hotels,
best five-star hotels in Seattle.
You can tell them about to go on a trip
'cause I'm looking for hotels.
But those are some of the examples that came top of mind.
- So the key to improving
and maintaining your ranking
after the page experience update
is the same as it was before,
create the best possible content
and optimize your page to provide a good user experience.
You may have time before the update.
I hope you do but look, don't wait to optimize your pages.
Follow these tips to improve user experience
which will help you now
and after the update takes full effect.
- But wait, your journey is not over.
We have over 200 episodes for you to watch
and continue on and learn and grow with your business.
Make sure to like comment and subscribe.
This is The Journey we'll see in the next video.