If you’re online, you’ve probably heard about SEO. It’s a necessary part of building an online presence, and if you’re not paying attention to it and its many changing nuances, it may well be impacting the visibility of your website in ways you don’t actually want.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a way of designing and maintaining websites and web content to ensure it shows up higher on the search engine result pages (SERPs). However, SEO isn’t a one-time thing; SEO requires constant updates and maintenance. This is because every once in a while, Big Google decides to change its search engine algorithms, adding or removing factors that can affect your search engine performance.
As a matter of fact, Google updates its SEO algorithm more than 500 times every year to ensure it keeps providing its users with the most relevant and accurate search engine results. Some changes are small, while others are big enough to have a drastic effect on your search engine results performance.
The most recent SEO algorithm updates include the release of Core Web Vitals, which consider the performance of your website as a factor in your SERP placement. Moreover, the latest SEO algorithm updates have also started giving more importance to passage ranking, versus simple keyword ranking.
If you want to make sure your website performance isn’t negatively impacted by SEO algorithm changes, consider implementing the tips below.
Research Relevant Keywords
Regardless of whether or not your website has suffered due to algorithm updates, it is essential to always thoroughly research potential keywords before writing any content. If the search results for your chosen keywords come back with high-quality content links, or if the potential of the keywords is satisfactory, use them within your content.
However, keep in mind that it’s also an excellent idea to use LSI keywords, as those types of keywords make it easier for Google to understand your content and list it properly within SERPs. LSI stands for latent semantic indexing, which is basically a fancy term for keywords that help provide Google with context about a piece of written content.
Create Long-Form Content
Long-form content is still a factor in SEO and likely always will be, despite our decreasing attention spans. Though longer content doesn’t always guarantee more success, it still shows better performance than short-form content, on average.
This is because, simply put, long-form content has more words, and hence, a higher chance of search engine query matching. However, long-form content should be designed with user search intent in mind for the best chances of success.
Include Snippets
Snippets are short extracts from your main content that are pulled to highlight the most important information. Including snippets as part of your SEO strategy increases your chances of showing up higher in the SERPs.
Incorporate Voice Search
Incorporating voice search techniques in your website design is another foolproof way of modernizing your content and ensuring it keeps showing up on the search engine result page. When someone uses voice search to query Google, any voice-search optimized website will be given preference in the SERP ranking. Consider it a very simple yet very necessary strategy and make it a practice to optimize all your content for voice search.
Should You Dread SEO Algorithm Changes?
No need! Though they can pose some challenges and keep you on your toes, if you are using good SEO practices, then updates should not impact you too significantly. Even if they do, it’s just a matter of recalibrating and getting back on track.
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