Rank Higher With Quality Content

If you’re an internet user in the UK, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that you’ll conduct your searches through Google, so for site owners targeting a British audience, it feels like it’s almost worth putting all your eggs in one basket.

As recently as February 2014, the accepted state of their market share was 88.6%, with Bing accounting for 6.38%, Yahoo taking 3.44% and the remainder squabbling over a paltry 1.58%. Therefore, for the sake of this article, what they say, goes.

It will probably come as a relief to many to learn that the old system of cramming buzz phrases into sites as often as possible, stockpiling inbound links and possessing a decent URL isn't the massive leg up it used to be. Now, in the era of Hummingbird that began in Autumn 2013, content is king, as well as being willing to lob a bit of cash their way for products like Adwords, sponsored links or their shopping services.

It's good news for people who are willing to pay the time and attention keeping their site active and putting effort into it, and bad news for those who loved paying out silly sums to cover black hat techniques in the hope of overnight success.

It has always been high on the agenda, but now regularity, authority and quality of content is more important than ever, so take the time to think about what you can do to make your site as useful a resource as it can be.

Imagine that your company is all about selling tins of sweetcorn. It may not sound like the most exciting product in the world, but are you prepared to make your site the most relevant and useful website for people with an interest in sweetcorn? Putting together a short write up about what sweetcorn is and why your company sells it is easy, as is coming up with some emotive text enthusing people to buy it, alongside the usual glossy, polished pictures of the product that you’d use to show it off. But what else can you do to stay ahead of the competition?

Well, how about a regularly updated news feed with the ability for users to leave comments, photo galleries, videos of the product in production, social media elements embedded into the site, history sections charting the evolution of the product and the company, an interactive map showing where your tins are stocked and a recipe section for ideas on how to serve it?

That’s all for starters, but imagine if you kept coming up with new ideas for interesting sections? Chances are that nobody (not even the Jolly Green Giant) could keep up with the depth of knowledge and information on offer, and chances are that those who put together the search algorithms would be pretty impressed too.

Google is now trying to be more intuitive and ‘conversational’ when it comes to search results, and as such you’ll find that every word in the phrase you type is carefully consider, rather than picking out one or two key words. A change you’ll find as a result is that a lot more of the high ranking results you’ll encounter are very recent and relevant pages, reacting to current trends. That’s why blogging on your site about contemporary topics can be so beneficial, as well as having a good social media stream on the go.

Because Google is expecting to be bombarded with searches that read like questions, it wants to be firing out results that read like answers, so sites that can satisfy the old 5 W’s rule (who, what, when, where, why) are going to figure strongly – i.e. sites that offer full and rounded content, rather than just being stuffed full of phrases that sound vaguely relevant.

Another interesting change is that search results have been far more ‘localised’ than ever before, with priority given to businesses nearer to where you’re conducting the search. To test that theory, if you offer a product that’s available in a wide variety of locations, try looking for that product close to home, and then try it out again next time you’re on your travels.

You may be disappointed to find that you’re not quite as easy for the whole world to find any more, but having opened up so many global possibilities, this is the internet’s way of trying to keep local businesses dealing with local people. Therefore, don’t be afraid of discussing local issues on your site – it could do your local listing the world of good!

There is still a place in modern search success for good quality links, so don’t think that link from the Daily Mail website proclaiming the wonder of sweetcorn isn’t doing you any good, but don’t go chasing links for numbers’ sake; just spend that time thinking of something new and interesting to add further depth to your site.

Get that mix of news, blogs, social media and good quality background content – particularly embedded YouTube videos from your own account now that they and Google+ work hand in hand – and whilst you can’t guarantee number one spot in all four corners of the globe, you may just come out on top for the bloke round the corner.