SEO in 2020 is different and so much better!
I spoke with a business owner today about concerns they had for their site’s SEO (search engine optimization). Their site was built by another developer and while they had the right “tools” in place as far as WordPress plugins and content capabilities, the reality was their site is not meeting its potential as far as reaching their target audience.
The business owner was wanting to do a keyword study to figure out what keywords would be best to attract customers, however after spending some time on their site and learning a bit more about their products, I could immediately see that the issue they need to address first is improving their user experience (UX) by ensuring that when someone does land on their site, they are able to quickly find the information they seek.
Google is smarter in 2020
These days, Google isn’t focused on keywords in the same way today as they were, say, 10, or even five years ago.
Remember, back in the day it was all about packing as many keywords as possible into the site’s metadata and then hoping that you’ll beat out your competition. The fact is it hasn’t been that way for a long time.
Gone are the days when you can just pack keywords into a site while not actually providing real and useful information to users and still expect to rank high in search results. (You can even read about how Google hates that kind of thing right here.)
Google’s algorithms have gotten increasingly more sophisticated over the years in order to deliver to end users the exact information they are seeking rather than just delivering content based on the best keyword packing in metadata. There’s a reason why Google is the #1 search engine. Users conducting searches are their “customers” and they want to ensure a great customer experience by delivering the most useful information to them when they perform a search.
Their BERT algorithm is focused on natural language processing and assessing what information someone conducting a search is likely seeking based on the information that Google has from previous searches as well as the way in which their query is worded.
This is why it’s critical that your site is developed in such a way that it is user-friendly and provides information that will let potential customers know exactly what it is you offer and how it will be the exact solution they need. Google will do the work of parsing the information on your site to deliver relevant results for searches.
At that point, what you need to identify is what sort of queries is your target audience making? What sort of question is someone searching online most likely to ask that could potentially lead them to your site?
Once you figure that out, you’re well on your way to structuring the way that information is presented on your site as well as in the individual pages and posts so that it will appear useful to Google and therefore useful to the end user.
If you would like an assessment of the user experience and SEO of your company’s site, get in touch. We’d love to help you out.
