9 Steps To A Google Friendly SEO Strategy

google friendly

As Google continues to update their algorithms; Panda, Pengiun, and the latest Hummingbird are you one of the many small business owners and marketers confused about what to do?

Do you pay an SEO company to help you show up in organic search?
Are you wondering if you should employ an SEO company to help with link building?
Or are you so confused about SEO, you’re just not sure what to do?

The purpose of this article to help small business owners and marketers understand what tactics they need to implement to create a Google friendly SEO strategy.

Let's start by understanding why we’re even interested in SEO – Search Engine Optimisation. As a marketer or small business owner you want to show up in on the first page for search terms you believe your target market is searching. The higher the better – spot number 1 is where people what to see their website ranking.

Why? The reason top spot on a Google search is important is because we want more traffic to our website. And we believe number one on Google will drive more traffic which should mean more leads and customers.

Google recommends that you don’t optimise for the search engines – but rather your target audience – but for many this is falling on deaf ears. It's no wonder so many people are concerned every time Google makes a change to their algorithm. It means a change to SEO tactics. No wonder they’re frustrated.

Google’s aim is to return search results that best match the searchers’ queries. When you type in a question (or any search term) you expect to find results that will provide the answers you’re searching. If people keep trying to “cheat” the algorithm to boost the rank of their website – rather than doing it the right way - then of course Google will have to keep changing the algorithm. Making it harder for people to “cheat” the system.

However, if your content is optimised for your target audience – publishing, educational and/or entertaining content – whatever it is your audience is searching then you don’t need to worry so much about what changes Google makes.

Therefore your SEO strategy should be to understand your target audience, better known as Buyer Personas, know what they’re looking for and why.

Here's my 9 steps to creating content your audience will love and so will Google.

Know to whom you’re targeting – check links below for buyer personas.
Know what they’re looking for – answers to questions, how to guides, instructional videos, entertaining pictures etc…
Know what words they’re using – and use those in your content.
Build a social media profile – LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Links to resources at the end of this article.
Create a content calendar – links to help you do this below.
Publish a variety of different forms of content; blog, ebook, video, image etc
Publish content regularly – if weekly is the best you can do, then do that and be consistent.
Analyse what’s working for you and do more of it – know what content gets shared, liked, commented on, generates leads or customers?
Empower your customers to easily share your content, talk about you – include social share buttons on your ebooks and blog articles.

What are your tips or questions regarding SEO? What do you do that works?