Blog & Company News

Oct 13, 2014

Elements of Organic Search 2014

Organic search elements change often. To stay ahead of your competition, your company and/or digital marketing firm should be staying on top of the newest search guidelines set forth by the search engines.  These guidelines provide you with “best practices” you should adopt right now to increase and improve your visibility within search engines.  Here are the latest elements search engines are targeting; the inclusion of the following (or lack thereof) will have considerable impact on search ranking positions. These elements will also continue to be important moving into 2015.

Page architecture, or the organization of your page content, has been very important in search for 2014. Using an On-Page optimization tool, you can analyze the existing structure of your webpage and see your website’s data as a search engine’s spider sees it, allowing for better web page optimization. On-Page coding allows search engines to crawl your website affectively and directs end users to what each page of your site is about. While there are several different elements of On-Page coding, for 2014, your URL, Title Tags, and Meta Descriptions are considered by many industry experts to have the most direct impact on search results.

TITLE TAGS

The Title Tag appears on the results pages just above the URL and also appears at the top of a browser. It defines the title of the page.

 Best Practices for Title Tags:

• Depending on the font you use, each title tag should be no more than 56 characters long.
• Title tags should be written with descriptive characters, unique to every page of your site.
• Utilize important keywords towards the front of the title tag.
• Google recommends title tags contain your brand name at beginning or end of each title.

META DESCRIPTIONS

Meta Descriptions appear in the search results under the title tag and URL. The meta descriptions provide concise explanations of the content of the web page.

 Best Practices for Meta Descriptions:

• Accurate meta descriptions, along with title tags, improve your click through rate
• A meta description should target a unique keyword for that page, only appearing once in the description.
• You should think of your meta description as a sales pitch for that page.
• Your descriptions should engage visitors and encourage them to click through to that page.
• Meta descriptions should include a strong call to action.

URL

A ‘SEO Friendly URL’ is a term often used by SEO analysts and marketing firms to define a URL that provides a good end user experience. You want your URL’s to please both the search engine bots crawling the site, as well as web users who are visiting the site.  Your URL should be relevant, engaging, accurate, and descriptive; but it should also be as brief as possible.

 Example URL’s:

• http://www.newtekwebservices.com/digital-marketing/ - We like to think this is a great example of a ‘SEO friendly’ URL. This address is static - meaning the contents of the web page stay the same unless the changes are hard-coded into the HTML -and contains keywords that a web user seeking digital marketing or technology services would be searching for. You can figure out what the page is about just by looking at the URL.

• http://www.companyname.com/jp=578432  - This is an example of a dynamic URL. A dynamic URL is a page address that results from the search of a database-driven web site or the URL of a web site that runs a script. This URL can be crawled by the search engines, however, does not offer the end user ease of use that a static URL offers.

EXAMPLE FROM SEARCH RESULTS (GOOGLE):

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS:

• Rich Snippets - Rich Snippets are the full lines of text under every search result. According to Google, they are designed to summarize the content of a page in a way that makes it even easier for users to understand what the page is about in our search results.
  • Examples of rich snippets in search results include ratings, reviews count, and price range. Utilizing calls to actions such as “see our hard to beat prices” as the call to action, encourages you to take a look at those prices resulting in a click through of the search result.

• Video Optimization - YouTube is the number two search engine owned by the largest, Google.  Incorporating video into your website helps freshen up the content and helps increase the chance of user engagement.
• Content Optimization  - Content is king was the most used Digital Marketing phrase of 2014.  Adding or updating your website with relevant fresh content will help it build or continue to grow your site’s authority within the search engines.  Utilizing a blog is a great way to do that. Having a blog installed on your website and blogging at a minimum once a week gives you an opportunity to create more fresh content, while at the same time educating your potential clients about your brand and your knowledge in your industry.  Context-based approach is crucial for content quality has been a huge element of search in 2014.
• Social Signals - There is an ongoing debate as to whether search engines utilize data from social accounts to determine ranking for your website. With that being said, what we do know is social media pages are treated like any other page in the search results, if the search engines can crawl it then they can return it in search results.  Social Media platforms also have a direct correlation to the number of visitors to your website. By distributing content or sharing important information about your business via your social media platforms, you have the potential to drive more traffic to your website. Using social platforms is also another great way to put out and share more content about your business.
• Back Linking - A well-defined SEO strategy should include researching and capturing qualified relevant back-links for your site.  The more relevant the link is to your industry, the more value it will pass to your website.

Sound Technically Overwhelming?

Call 866-820-8910 today for a FREE digital marketing consultation with the experts here at Newtek Web Services. We will be glad to review your website and provide you with a competitor analysis to give you a better understanding your business’ digital landscape. We’d also be glad to discuss or answer any questions that you may have about any of our online marketing services. Contact us today and let our digital marketing team take your business to the next level.