SEO is like a gigantic building with hundreds of floors. It’s impossible to explore every floor and travel to the rooftop without an elevator. One would marvel at its gigantic architecture, strong pillars, and everything.
Just like a single entity can control the whole building, Google controls the ranking algorithm. You only become a leader in your niche by being relevant, trustworthy, and having authority. If you sway away from the standards set by Google, your website will disappear from the search page.
Gone are the days when you could target a few potential keywords and rank your website. Amid the increasing competition, fresh Google updates, and Google’s crackdown against spammers, your website can only grow if it’s based on these three pillars.
As a Digital Marketing agency in Dubai, we are confident to claim that these three pillars can make or break your online business. If you are not sure about what things fall in these, let’s dig deep and explore all three terms in depth.
Trust
Building trust is a big deal. It can take up to a year for Google to trust your website. It depends on how frequently you update your website, the quality of content, security, brand engagement, and several other factors.
If your content is updated regularly, you will build useful links over time. And nowadays, it’s a common practice to buy links ( though it’s against Google’s policies). When credible brands or sites refer to your website, Google starts trusting you.
Building trust is a long-term game. You have to integrate social media with your website, share the people’s faces behind the business, and every detail about your business.
A monthly content audit is mandatory for it. You can replace old citations and numbers with the latest ones. Likewise, the meta-data of pages, your contact information, and other details should be updated in case of any change.
Relevance
Google understands the fact that people today treat it as a library. To write a thesis, they use the information available on Google. To write a book, they rely on the studies and research published on Google. Students and teachers resort to Google when they want to prepare any kind of learning material.
That’s why Google is quite strict about the authenticity of the information published on any website. Google wants to display content written by professionals and experts in a particular field. That’s why relevancy matters.
Read Also: Powerful Ways To Boost Your ECommerce Business With PR and Social Media
If you are publishing information about health, electronic devices, sports, and multiple industries, you will lose the element of relevancy here. For Google, if a website only covers the health niche, its content is more relevant than a generic website.
Likewise, if a website only writes about skincare, it will be more relevant than a website that covers everything about health. The more specific you get in terms of niche the more relevancy you develop.
The same goes for the links you build. Irrelevant backlinks do more harm than good. Why would a tech website link to your website if it’s about health?
Google’s algorithm is intelligent enough to spot these loopholes. In the longer run, these mistakes affect your website’s ranking on Google.
Authority
Trust and relevance beget authority. When Google considers you a trustworthy source of information or brand in a specific industry, you become an authority. But it’s a long ride, you don’t become an authority in a niche overnight.
The higher the authority, the better your visibility will be in the search engine results.
From the quality of content to your clean record ( in terms of spamming), your domain name and hosting service, and all factors associated with trust and relevance prove you an authority in your niche.
The Authority of a website is particularly associated with the depth of content on each page. Are you able to answer the common queries of people with data? Is your content deep and research-based, or fluffy?
That’s why long-form content is preferred by SEO experts. The general notion is the more content you create, the higher Google will rank your pages.
Though to some extent this strategy is effective, you can’t expect long-term improvement by writing thousands of unnecessary words. A search engine might assume that your content is informative because of the length, but humans won’t.
Read Also: What is Test-Driven Development – Learn All About It
How to Build These Pillars for Your Website?
As said earlier, SEO is a long-term game. You have to create multiple strategies, move from one strategy to another whenever a new update is rolled out. At times proven strategies seem to fail for your niche because there’s no one-strategy-for-all in the SEO world.
Spamming and going against Google policies will land you in trouble. Your website can be penalized for months and even disappear from the top 100 pages. Think before implementing any idea or strategy on your website. SEO is critical for any online business.
If you feel you don’t have enough time and resources to manage the SEO of your website, let the experts do all the content creation, backlinking, and everything in between while you focus on the bottom line.
Hello, My name is Shari & I am a writer for the ‘Outlook AppIns’ blog. I’m a CSIT graduate & I’ve been working in the IT industry for 3 years.