Its fair to say that nothing stands still within the seo world for very long. This means as soon as any agency believes they have cracked Google’s almighty algorithm, then it will shift and morph into something new.
And this is for a good reason, if the ranking signals stayed the same for too long, well its fair to say that getting a website to occupy the number one position within Google’s results would be a piece of cake.
However, Google’s algorithm is anything but simple, to be precise, its made up of over 200+ ranking factors. So its inherently complex, and because of this most agencies, including Top Space review on a regular basis what we believe the changes that have been made to the algorithm are.
What are ranking factors?
Google’s algorithm rates websites based on the ranking signals. Without getting overly technical here, its fair to say that ranking signals can be grouped into one of two groups. Those groups are off-site seo signals and on-site seo signals.
Examples of offsite signals are backlinks, business citations and mentions of a business. On-site seo signals are content marketing, internal backlinks and title tags for example.
Google’s algorithm then computes all those ranking signals, assigns a weight to each of them, and then ranks websites accordingly.
However, here’s the complex bit, nobody outside of Google knows how much weight Google gives to each individual ranking signals. So nobody really knows in what exact order the 200+ ranking signals should be ordered. Plus, ranking signals change in importance from time to time.
But do not despair, that’s because our seo agency puts in the hours every single week, and we are constantly improving our knowledge so that we can better understand Google’s algorithm. As for the reasons outlined above, any agency stating they completely understand the algorithm are being naïve, as the algorithm is regularly being changed.
So, with that said, if you were to ask any of the team here, what we believe all agencies should be doing to help their clients to rank better in 2018, we would advise the following:
Make sure that the website is crawlable
This is one of the most basic considerations that any agency should consider, none the less it’s a very important one.
As more and more web designers are opting for more minimalist style websites, this can sometimes come at the sacrifice of actual seo performance.
For instance, if the homepage of a website has very little written text, or onsite seo, then Googlebot may struggle to workout what the homepage is about.
The answer therefore is to make sure your website is crawlable, so that Googlebot, and the other search engines can read your website easily. If Googlebot understands your website better, then Google’s algorithm can understand the website better, and this can result in better rankings.
Ensuring that website is easy to use
We believe as an absolute minimum a website should offer the following:
- The menu or navigation should be easy to use
- Ensure that the website works on mobile devices
- The website should load quickly
- The website should offer good quality information
Content marketing
Content marketing is still king. We don’t believe this will change throughout 2018. However, the same old rules still apply, and they are as follows:
- The content marketing must be unique and not duplicated
- Any content writer must observe white hat rules, i.e understand Google’s Panda updates
- Be focused on offering excellent quality information, the work should aim to be far superior when compared with your direct competitors
