Google has once again thrown the world into a panic by updating their search engine algorithm.

Marketers and small business owners everywhere are worrying that the changes will destroy their customers and buyers chances of finding them in search.

Before you start to worry, here’s a blog explaining exactly what’s changing and how to avoid being penalized.

But this news shouldn’t scare you. Rather, it should start a conversation.

You need to ask the question: how do I make sure my website is search engine friendly?

While there’s no guarantee that Google won’t do something crazy to drastically alter how they rank website content, there are some tips to implement that will ensure your site is always working as best as possible to attract visitors, through the search engines.

Your site needs to have a great user experience.

As long as search engines have been developing, they’ve always kept the end user in mind when creating complex formulas to crawl the web.

No matter what amazing graphics your website has of whales doing the tango, search engines don’t care. Simply because people looking for help on your site don’t care if you have whales doing the tango, it’s not what they’re looking for.

Google designs their algorithm around what’s the best experience and most helpful to the person searching. So really making your site SEO friendly comes down to giving visitors a great experience.

How can you guarantee a create experience? Here are our quick tips to make your website a great place to visit, that Google, Yahoo!, and Bing will love.

Make your site scannable

Let’s face it, the people who read every word on a website are few and far between.

Reading a blog on your company page, or a product description should not read like Hamlet, “To buy? Or, not to buy? That is the question.”

Web copy needs to be easy to read and scannable. People want to be able to quickly find what they’re looking for. Make clear headers and break up your paragraphs, because nobody likes reading giant blocks of text.

Speed it up

What’s your patience level when waiting for a page to load?

How many times have you closed out of a window and gone to another site because the page took 10 seconds or longer to load?

We can see the guilty hands raising through the screen.

If your page has lots of images, video, or crazy graphics, then it’s going to take a while for your website to load. Unfortunately, in that time any people checking out your site will leave. Avoid this by checking and making sure nothing is dragging your site’s loading time down.

Have clear navigation

You may think having a standard navigation setup is boring, but people visiting your site don’t.

People need to be able to figure out where they’re supposed to go to find the answers they’re looking for.

Stick to an easy to follow layout.

Your site needs to be mobile friendly.

Compared to the past, more and more people are using their phones to shop and browse the web. If your site isn’t mobile friendly, you could potentially lose lots of customers.

When you’re working with a web design company to build a website, you need to make sure they’re willing to make your site mobile-friendly. They should be able to plan around design issues and let you know if a certain feature on your site won’t translate well to mobile.

To make your site the best experience possible for people viewing it on their phones, be careful with interactive designs. They never translate well on mobile, so it’s best to skip them altogether on the mobile version of your site.

Also, consider what the first thing you want to be seen on your page via mobile. Is it a form? A block of text? A large image? It’s always better to go with a more simplistic design when creating a mobile layout for your site.

Your content needs to optimized.

Optimized is a word that gets thrown around in the industry, but most small business owners have no idea what it means.

Optimizing your content for SEO is not some magic trick only for marketing masters. It’s not unreasonable to achieve or even incredibly difficult. Simply put, optimizing your web copy means putting thought and effort into what is written on every page of your website.

Keywords are your friends, but don’t try and cram them into every sentence. You need to write for humans, first, then for SEO purposes, second. Writing content that’s of value for your customers will serve you better in the long run, and assure your website copy stays unaffected even when Google changes their algorithm.

Having a keyword strategy is critical in order for your potential buyers and prospects to find your business, when searching online. It’s important because it helps Google rank your site based on what words you want to be found when consumers are searching for you, online.

One great method to optimizing your content is by blogging. Blogging helps your website stay relevant with the search engines because the search engines love fresh stuff which answers questions around your audience’s problems.

Despite everything you do to stay relevant when people are searching for your business, Google will always continue to change their algorithm, and that’s okay. There’s a lot of things that can change in an instant, but keeping the above practices in mind will help your site stay relevant with the search engines.

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