It might be frustrating to hear, but SEO takes time. You cannot expect results overnight regarding your business’s Google rankings.

Sometimes, a company may shoot to the top of the SERPs almost immediately using black hat SEO tactics (ones that cheat the system!), but this isn’t feasible. They will drop back down into the abyss of Google just as quickly as they came.

Focusing on putting into action an effective and high-quality on-page and off-page strategy is the best way to go. It may take your business a few weeks to reach the first page of search results, or it may take months, but you cannot rush the process.

There are many reasons why some sites may rank better than others, like the strength of a domain, the backlink profile of a domain and the domain name’s relevancy. These are all valuable things to consider when buying domains; however, once your business starts to rank and you see the results you have dreamed of, rankings can still fluctuate daily. You are, essentially, at Google’s mercy.

Many panics when their SERP positions drop, but this shouldn’t be your initial reaction. We will outline why your rankings may chop and change to emphasise that ranking fluctuations are not something to fret about daily.

Ranking factors are entirely out of your control, so don’t let them rule your life!

Why are your rankings fluctuating?

1. Positioning in SERPs

If your business hasn’t yet reached the first page or one of the top positions for your desired search terms, you should be prepared for more fluctuation in where you appear in the search results. Sites that appear lower than around the fourth position are not as stable as those in the first few results.

As a result of this, any minor changes that you make to your site and/or SEO strategy at this stage will have a much more significant impact on your rankings. For this reason, it is arguably more important to keep your site updated with fresh and high-quality content when ranking in the teens or even further down to increase your chances of shooting further up.

Therefore, conversely, if your site has reached one of the top few positions and has maintained its ranking for a prolonged period (congratulations), the small changes you make to your site will have far less of an impact.

If your business reaches one of the top rankings but drops again shortly after, don’t panic – it isn’t easy to compete with companies that have consistently appeared in the top three. You will get there eventually with time, hard work and patience. We would say that if you have held a leading position for several months, but you are still fluctuating regularly, that would be the time to take a closer look at the potential cause of the movement.

2. Topics

As well as your current rankings affecting the regularity of your fluctuations, your content’s topic(s) and your business type can also influence you.

When it comes to business type, the product/service that you offer may be somewhat temporal. For example, a professional gardening service would naturally receive far more website traffic during the warmer seasons, like spring and summer. Hence, their rankings may reflect this. Google aims to show people exactly what they want to see regarding relevancy and accessibility – significantly fewer people will be browsing for gardeners when it is freezing outside.

If you make sure that you are aware of your business’ potential peak and off-peak times of the year, you can be mentally and practically prepared for the changes to your Google rankings.

Even if your business’ products/services are in demand all year round, the topics of the content published on your site may affect your rankings. There are always new trends going on, and whilst it is impossible to keep up with them all, if your business posts relevant content relating to a current trend, it can affect your rankings to a significant extent. It is easy to identify the search results affected by popularity and current events as Google will include a time and date of publication next to these. If one of your pages has a date/time next to it, you should expect it to fluctuate more than others due to the nature of the content.

3. Google Algorithms

Sometimes, changes in rankings have nothing to do with your actions. Google makes minor changes to their algorithms practically every day for improvements, so these will affect your position in the SERPs at some point. Due to the nature of Google’s ever-changing algorithms, we highly recommend monitoring your rankings weekly rather than daily. This way, you can identify any significant drops or improvements that have stayed consistent rather than getting caught up on daily small fluctuations.

As well as Google making small regular changes, they will implement a large-scale update every now and then. You may have heard of their Panda, Penguin or Hummingbird updates, which rock the boat once they are put into play. When this happens, you shouldn’t throw your existing SEO strategy out the window – take the time to understand any new ranking factors and update your site accordingly. It is impossible to avoid some fluctuations due to these Google updates.

4. Content and links

Your site’s content is what Google uses to deem whether you are legitimate and offer browsers quality information. Therefore, regularly uploading fresh and valuable content is a great way to boost your rankings. When new content is added, Google bots will crawl it to determine its relevance and where your site deserves to rank. On the flip side, if you upload poor, un-optimised content, the overall quality of your site and rankings will suffer. Don’t upload any content you aren’t proud of to your site.

As much as the uploading of new content affects your current rankings, removing old content also plays a role. It is a great idea to audit all the content on your site to identify any that may need updating. You should never rush into removing old content, though; even if it’s not up to your current standard, it may rank due to age. We would suggest identifying all the pages on your site ranking. Once you’ve done this, edit them so they are fully optimised and reflect your business goals.

The same goes for links – if you add quality links to your site and remove broken links, your rankings will most likely improve.

5. Competitors

Occasionally, your site’s rankings may be pushed further up or down the SERPs due to one of your competitors doing the opposite. We can’t all take first place – understanding this will help you to keep a level head when you are kicked from your top spot temporarily.

Fluctuations may be due to existing competitors moving up or down or result from a new keyword competitor making an appearance. There will always be competition – your business should stick to your effective ongoing SEO strategy rather than panicking and trying to change things in a hurry to compete.

Although competitors for your desired search terms may frustrate you regarding their rankings, they can give you peace of mind when you see your rankings change suddenly. If your close competitors are experiencing fluctuations too, you know the changes result from external factors and not your actions.

You can also learn from your competitors by analysing their ranking pages and updating your pages to go above and beyond what they offer. As well as doing some on-page competitor analysis, don’t forget to delve into the backlink profile of your competitors to see which types of links you are missing and build them accordingly!

Although this is not an exhaustive list of reasons why your rankings can regularly fluctuate, hopefully, it has shown that moving up and down the SERPs is not always a bad thing. Any small or big change you make to your site or Google’s algorithm will have an effect, so panicking when you see changes is, quite frankly, a waste of time.

We recommend taking a closer look at your site if many of your pages drop simultaneously over a prolonged period and calling us if you have any queries.

The post Understanding Your Google Ranking SEO appeared first on Bigfoot Agency.

Your domain name is your identity on the web. You want to make sure that you choose a name that is not only relatable to your business but is memorable and easy to promote.  

Domain names have a massive impact on click-through rates all across the web, on social media, type-in searches, brandability and offline advertising. There’s a huge risk in picking a domain name for your business.

Here are some rules to follow to ensure you select the right domain name:

1) Make it brandable.

Brandable means that when you see a name, instinctively, you relate it to that business. Hyphens, capitals, and strange variations of a brand name can confuse readers and make them question the direction of a URL.

Let’s say our business was selecting a domain name for the first time:

• www.marketing-online.co.uk is directly related to marketing (with key terms included). However, it would be hard to brand, say, or remember. Google may also flag this as a spammy tactic used to rank for ‘online marketing’ keywords.
  
• www.Big-foot-digital.co.uk does include the name of our business and is unique, but is quite challenging to say.
  
• www.bigfootdigital.co.uk is perfect because it’s easy to say and remember and is highly brandable.

2) Use keywords.

Sorry. I know we’re making things confusing, but stick with me. Using keywords in your domain name does sometimes give you a boost in the rankings. This works well if your business name features keywords you want to rank for. Only then can you get away with including them in your domain name, as it’s highly brandable.

Take our domain of ours, www.londonseoagency.com. Our brand name is the London SEO Agency. This makes link building, keyword research and optimisation far easier. When building links for this as a new domain, it’s possible to vary the anchor text while still using our chosen keywords:

londonseoagency.com
www.londonseoagency.com
londonseoagency

However…

Keyword-rich domains have trained Google and searchers to be suspicious. They are seen as a direct attempt to rank for chosen keywords. If you make it clear that your brand name is your keyword, don’t worry. Otherwise, steer well clear of this as an optimisation technique. It doesn’t hold the same weight as it once did.

3) Keep it short

The shorter the domain name, the better.

Shorter names are easier to read, pronounce and spell. These URLs don’t need to be shortened for social media sharing and search results. This will help create a smooth user journey for your audience. People won’t have to use a shortened URL that will potentially confuse them and leave them unsure about the domain name of your website.

4) Opt for a .com domain

There are many TLD extension options these days. We still prefer using .com or .co.uk where possible. These extensions are most frequently found in the search results. Therefore, people are used to seeing them. If you want to build a brandable domain that is instantly recognisable, always go for .com.

Because .com domains are the most common, they are often taken. Keep in mind your chosen domain name. The name you want may not be available with the .com TLD, so it’s a case of weighing up the strength of the options available.

5) Avoid trademark infringement.

It’s not always a case of whether your domain name is confused. It’s more about whether a company could take legal action against you for selecting a domain name owned by another.

Do your research before hitting ‘buy now.’ Don’t select a domain name easily recognised as another company. For starters, it’s not great for the brandability of your business. And second, well, you could end up in a lot of trouble with the law, and that sucks.

We hope this has cleared up some common questions surrounding domain name selection. Don’t forget to bring up the topic of domain name selection with your consultant on your next call.

The post Find A Domain Name: Five Rules appeared first on Bigfoot Agency.

Authoritative and relevant backlinks.

Of course, powerful backlinks remain Google’s top ranking factor. A strong link-building strategy will really work in your favour – without it, you’ll lose out on your chances of ranking at all, especially if you’re a business just starting out.

However, you need to do it correctly to have your desired impact. Think about these different ways you can improve your current link-building strategy:

• Asking your content to be included in a roundup – posts that include content and opinions from niche-specific professionals.
• Write up genuine case studies.
• Provide free content or tools for people to use.
• Create infographics.

Of course, if you don’t have the right content to link to, it will be difficult to secure a decent backlink. Always ensure you create engaging, informative content that people will love linking to.

Mobile responsive.

After Google’s mobile-first update in 2018, mobile optimisation remains a top ranking factor. This means that Google now favours sites optimised for mobile search over all overs. With a high percentage of web searches coming from a mobile device, ensuring your website is responsive on different devices is increasingly important.

User experience.

Your site architecture is becoming increasingly important. Not only is it crucial to help potential customers find what they need easier, but it also helps search engine crawlers find more pages.

A website should be super simple to use and navigate around. In fact, it should take a customer 3 or 4 clicks at the most to find what they are looking for on a site. If they can’t after this time, they’ll inevitably press the back button and begin their search again elsewhere.

Also, by having clearly visible call-to-action buttons and updated content, you’ll be able to see an increase in users staying on your site for longer, as well as an increase in page views. Regularly updated content works wonders (which is why having a blog is a great idea).

Keep your website secure.

Back in 2017, Google’s Chrome browser began to flag up those sites that weren’t secure in the URL bar. Having a secure site gives you much more chance of keeping a customer on your site. You can say goodbye to your next sale when they see that “Not secure” URL bar.

Google will now favour secure sites over those that aren’t, meaning that you risk being wiped from search results altogether if your site isn’t.

Quality content.

Stuffing your content with unnatural keywords may temporarily work, but you will eventually be found out by Google, who will then take action to remove you from search results. 

The quality of your page content and your blog is actually still an important factor where SEO is concerned. Optimised copy for the right keywords holds great power regarding your rankings. You need to create pages of value, not only for your customers but to show Google you mean business.  

Know what your customers are searching for before you make any content changes. All your content may need could be a bit of optimisation for the right keyword or a new article on a topic. Optimised content helps Google place you in the right position in the search results.

The post The 5 Top Ranking Google Website Factors appeared first on Bigfoot Agency.

We’re not just talking about the here and now of SEO. It has been a decade now since Google started improving the quality of search. While the majority of these changes are indispensable, some are real game changers.

So today, we’re going to step through some of the most remarkable Google algorithm updates and explain how to adapt your marketing strategy to be prepared for them:

Panda (2011):

The very first update that shook the SEO world and started the white-hat revolution was the Panda algo update. In a nutshell, Panda was introduced to locate and downrank websites that produced low-quality, spammy content. The main culprits were those who used keyword stuffing to rise to the top of the search results. Though, back then everyone pretty much used this tactic. Think about it this way; Google sets the rules. We simply have to move with the times or face being dropped from the search results altogether.
Watch out for:

• Thin content.
• Duplicate content.
• User-generated spam.
• Irrelevant content.

What to do:
The best way to identify any of these errors is through a site audit. Since Panda is not limited to certain pages, it’s crucial that you cover everything. It may be an article you published some years ago but if it’s active online, it can still be crawled. 

Using the industry-standard site crawler, Deepcrawl, will help locate any issues that may be holding you back. It’s a simple tool that requires you to enter your web address and hit ‘scan.’ From there, you will be presented with a report, and that’s where things get interesting.

Look for the issues mentioned above and take steps to rectify them. Some of them will require more attention than others. For example, duplicate content is one of the main reasons for a website to drop in the rankings. Google is quick to catch on.

If you do find duplicate content on your website,  decide which page you want to rank in the search results. Don’t be tempted to just remove one, though. You need to check first in Google Analytics to see which page is bringing in the most organic traffic. It’s no good removing a page with the potential to generate new business.

The second option is to apply a rel=canonical tag to the page you want to rank in the search engines. The major difference between a canonical tag and a redirect is that a canonical tag is simply a hint to Google and not a directive.

Penguin (2012):

Following Panda, in 2012 Google launched Penguin which was aimed at down-ranking websites with manipulative, spammy links. The thing is, links have always been in the most powerful ranking factor. Before the update, however, Google could not determine the quality of a link. The search results were a battlefield with SEO’s buying links from anywhere. There was no quality control. Of course, this could not continue – so Penguin was introduced to scan every external and internal link to ensure they were relevant and authoritative.

Watch out for:

• Over-optimised anchor text.
• Links from spammy sites. Be aware that your competitors can point links at your site to outrank you. Google is working to find these links quicker so that you don’t have to disavow them.
• Irrelevant links pointing to your site.

What to do:The very first thing to do when fighting spammy links is to get a complete list of backlinks pointing to your website. It’s important to keep in mind that while you may be building high-powered, relevant backlinks, others may not. They could be messing up your link building efforts by directing low-authority links to your pages.

Google is getting better at spotting manipulative links and is taking steps to remove them without the need for a disavow file. For now, however, we would always recommend using a tool, like Majestic SEO, to review your backlink profile in detail.

The next step is to identify toxic links. This is a manual process, and for a large site, it can take some time. From there, you can hand-select the links with a low trust score that are not relevant to your industry. These are the ones that can potentially harm your SEO efforts.

One of the safest ways to remove links is to contact the webmasters directly and ask them to remove the link. If they don’t reply, then it’s time to submit a disavow file with the help of Google’s disavow tool. It’s essential to consider every link in detail before submitting your file. The last thing you want is to disavow links that are sending traffic to your site and boosting your rankings. There’s a fine line, so always speak to a professional beforehand.

Hummingbird (2013) / RankBrain (2015)

Once Google established some order to its search results, it turned its attention to search intent. This is the understanding of why people use the keywords they do. Google rolled out the Hummingbird update in 2013 and later followed RankBrain in 2015. Both of these updates work to help better establish the meaning behind searches but operate in slightly different ways.

Hummingbird works to help establish the purpose of a search query and present relevant results to the searcher. Previously, Google used keywords alone to allocate places in the search results. Following the update, the combination of words and context are taken into consideration.

RankBrain is a machine learning software that helps better understand the logic behind certain search queries. It’s an addition to Hummingbird, which is based on previous search data. RankBrain will look at what a searcher typed into Google in connection with the results they clicked on to predict the search intent.

Watch out for:

• Keyword stuffing.
• Unnatural language.  
• Irrelevant content.

What to do:

If you are an old-school SEO’er, it’s time to change your ways. Using one broad keyword across your page will no longer result is higher rankings. You need to diversify your content with synonyms and LSI-keywords. This should be an easy task for a skilled content writer, as people tend to use these words naturally when writing.

Pigeon / Possum

For many years it was considerably difficult to rank for local search terms, especially when compared with the competition from national rivals. It wasn’t fair as some of the local search terms were incredibly relevant and presented more accurate results for local queries. For that reason, Google rolled out the Pigeon update in 2016 closely followed by the Possum two years later.

The launch of the Pigeon update was intended to bring local search results in line with the national ones. It was a major consideration when ranking local search results. This saw directory listings skyrocket to the top of the rankings. It also created more ties with Google Maps.

The Possum update was focused on ranking websites for local terms based on the searcher’s geographical location. It now means that if you’re close to a business, then it’s more likely to appear in the search results than a rival company 10 miles away! It’s just common sense.

Watch out for:

• NAP consistency.
• Google My Business optimisation.
• Local SEO website optimisation.

What to do:

Optimise for local search: Now that Google is placing more relevance on local search results, it makes sense to capitalise on that search traffic. It’s a tactic that, to this day, many companies neglect. They are hell bent on ranking for broad keywords and forget the relevance of local search terms. Get ahead of the game by optimising your website to rank for local search terms. Creating separate landing pages for different locations nearby will increase your chances of ranking in the search results.

Set up Google My Business: If you want your site to be included in Google’s local index, a Google My Business page is a must. Make sure you categorise your listing with your services/products. It’s also important to keep your GMB consistent with any local directory listings or citations you build (which is an absolute must!)

Mobilegeddon (2015) / Mobile-First Indexing (2018):

The importance of mobile search started back in 2015 when Google released its first Mobile Friendly update. People were using their mobiles to search for local attractions, such as restaurants, theatres, pubs, parks, etc. The list goes on. To make for an improved mobile user experience, the mission became to up-rank websites that were optimised for mobile devices.

In 2018, we saw the Mobile-First algo update. This still causes a lot of confusion with companies. Mobile-First Indexing is not about rankings – it’s all about indexing. Search engines bots will crawl the mobile version of your site first.

Watch out for:

• Lack of mobile optimisation.

What to do:

There will come a time when all websites are optimised for mobile searching. If didn’t receive a notification about mobile-first indexing in your Google Search Console account, then it means your site wasn’t re-indexed. The best thing to do would be to check your robots.txt file to ensure that all your pages are accessible to Google’s bots. You don’t want to restrict access to any important pages.

Need help?

For help with all things SEO, please get in touch with our expert team at Bigfoot Agency.

The post Google Algorithm Update: Organic Search History appeared first on Bigfoot Agency.