Most website owners dream of having their company’s name appear in the top position of a Google SERP. But, the reality is, figuring out how the top ranking companies reach the number one spot and remain there is a bit complicated. Terms like ‘SEO’, ‘rankings’, ‘link-building’, ‘organic results’, ‘meta descriptions’, and ‘keywords’ send most of us running for cover. But, there’s much more involved in the process than merely building an awesome site. For those who want to learn more about how Google ranks websites, a wealth of information can be found by searching any of the above terms. Also, Google offers a variety of tools, apps, and tutorials to help a novice improve their skills. One valuable tutorial discusses how to use Google search console. Originally known as Google Webmaster Tools, it was designed to assist webmasters in analyzing and understanding the traffic on their websites. It can track the number of visits to the website, whether the traffic came from a mobile device or desktop computer, and can tell you which pages on your site were visited the most and more.
How Some Brands Dominate Google Search Results
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a collection of methods you can utilize for improving the visibility of your website on SERP (Search Engine Results Pages). The trick to maintaining that visibility involves staying alert for the ever-changing landscape of SEO. The days of keyword-stuffed, 300-word articles are gone. Today, we have to work a little harder to keep our site fresh, relevant, informative, and ranking. With this in mind, we have to wonder if there are some tricks or shortcuts that the top ranking site owners know that keeps them in the top spot on Google searches. To delve into that premise a little deeper, we can look at one of today’s highest ranking sites, Hearst.com.
Hearst is a diversified company with ownership in cable television networks; global rating agency, Fitch Group; Hearst Health; 30 television stations; major newspapers; and more than 300 magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, and Marie Claire, just to name a few. Their latest venture is a new website, BestProducts.com. Since it was launched in October, the site now receives more than 600,000 visitors from Google each month. How did they accomplish this feat in such a short time? According to some intensive research by viperchill.com, Hearst used their powerful brands like Marie Claire and others to “game Google.” Using their authoritative brands and linking them to BestProducts.com, they put this new site in the rankings in a rather dramatic way.
Gaining Google’s Trust for Better Ranking
In order to be successful with SEO, we must be willing to do a lot of slow, steady work. Everything we do should be directed toward building Google’s trust. Since trust is an inherent aspect of Google’s relevancy equation, let’s take a look at some of the things that affect how Google looks at a website:
- Indexed Age – This refers to the date that Google discovered your website or domain. The date differs from the year you originally released the site. A new website will have a harder time ranking on Google’s SERPs than one that has some age.
- Authority Profile – Google cares about the quality of content your links are coming from. It also cares about the relevance of the sites that are linking to your domain. It looks for IP-diverse links that are not all coming from the same source. HIgh-quality links that increase in frequency are also important to Google.
- Quality Content: Consider content as the anchor that keeps your site tethered to Google’s relevancy algorithms. Poor grammar, spelling and punctuation errors, duplicate content, and low word count will really hurt. Google looks for well-written, engaging, keyword-centric content that keeps the reader’s attention.
Fortunately, for individuals who can’t seem to comprehend all of the Google jargon, Web Content Development is here to help. We are a full-service content development team. Visit our website here or contact us for more information about our services.
