Anyone with a smattering of knowledge about onsite strategies that help propel a website to the top of Google Search rankings understands the basics: keyword saturation, title tags, description and link-building…yadda, yadda, yadda.
But did you know that Google considers many off-site indicators when assessing a website’s domain authority? As Google has expanded and evolved its algorithms, it has included these indicators to help gather real intel from its constituents in the search community (being you and everyone else that uses Google Search). Traffic that comes from other sources than Search can be a great indicator of the true value your website offers the industry you inhabit. With that in mind, here are the top four off-site strategies you can employee to shore up your domain credibility and scale the rankings like a pro:
1) Business/Industry Directory Profiles: Setting up business profiles in reputable online directories gives your website instant credibility with Google. It says you’re serious about your online identity, you plan to be around for a while and if that reputable directory trusts you enough to publish your profile, Google trusts you as well. Just be sure to use the same exact format for your address listing in the profile as you do on your website so there’s no confusion. After all, Google?s algorithms are still evolving and don’t always get the distinction between “St.” and “Street.” Help them out and keep things consistent.
2) Google Product Profiles: This one is a no-brainer. Google owns several entities. It makes sense that if you want to get in good with the search giant, you need to play nice with its products. Setting up properly linked profiles on Google products like Google Plus, Google My Business and YouTube will go a long way toward collecting a bunch of bonus points for your website when Google’s algorithms come a crawling.
3) Social Media Sharing: Apart from Google Search, social media is a vehicle that “guides” much of the traffic online today. Think about it: many people consume their online news media first from a shared social post, whether it’s shared by the publisher or another party. Much of it all starts with social media. Google would prefer it started with a Google search, of course, but the search engine?s engineers are savvy enough to know that a website getting a lot of traffic from social links is clearly an authoritative site in some respect.
How do you capitalize on this? Create phenomenal content that people interested in your product or service will want to share and get it out through all of your social channels. When it is shared by others, your site gets points from Google. When your site gets traffic from these posts, your site gets points from Google. Just be sure to include links back to your content. It?s the domain URL that gets Google’s attention.
4) Traffic from Email Marketing: A website that suffers from organic traffic can help supplement what it gets from Google Search with a dedicated group of subscribers from a weekly or monthly email blast. How does this help your Google ranking? The same way social traffic does. If your website is authoritative enough to get consistent traffic from email blasts to a dedicated group of recipients, who is Google to say it isn’t authoritative? Consistent traffic from email blasts gets on Google’s radar simply because your following keeps coming back, which means your site must offer something of value for that to happen. The result is your site gets points from Google crawlers and as a result moves up in position so that it can begin to get more traffic organically. Hey, if it?s a good enough resource for your core subscribers to keep coming back to month in and month out, it?s good enough to present to Google?s search audience as a resource as well, at least that?s the way the search giant looks at it.
If you would like to discuss ways in which a comprehensive SEO campaign can support your revenue and lead generating initiates, call the consultants at Proctor Digital at 312.535.3780. We love helping small businesses scale the heights of online search and grow their businesses through increased targeted online traffic.