Google’s search algorithms are constantly changing, making it hard for anyone to keep up and make sure that their results appear high up on the Google searches. Instead of panicking about poor reviews or reputation-damaging pages, it’s quite easy for marketers to leverage Google’s search metrics to make sure their results appear first.
In this article, we’re going to take a look at a variety of ways that you can use to make sure that your good news floats up to the top in search results. As with any SEO strategy, this is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process, but the results will be worth it. Let’s get started with what’s most important.
It’s all about the people
Marketing is largely an exercise in the behavioral psychology of potential customers. Just because you work within a computerized system to get your content out there doesn’t mean that you should treat your users like robots. People need engaging content that they can share easily with friends. They don’t need to be preached to, talked down to, or patronized. The content has to be informative, reliable, and fact-based while staying entertaining. Is this a tall order? Maybe, but once you master this skill you’ll no longer have to worry about whether or not your content is what users are looking for.
It’s about quality over quantity
Some of the highest-paid teams at Google are researchers who determine sophisticated ways for Google to discern the most relevant, high-quality content from the spam. The days of link farms and blog networks are over – your article and site content must be relevant and high-value. Don’t try to outsmart Google. You will fail.
Blogging is a particularly good way to increase the quality of your posts as it’s a direct connection with a user instead of a way for you to pump in keywords. Google is actually rating lower those articles that have a lower quality, so it behooves you to invest in a smaller number of good quality articles. Check out this article on Google-friendly blog building.
Better links are key
In much the same way as articles, incoming links are all about quality over quantity, too. It used to be the case that a company would have a ton of links all pointing to the same main post, but that is no longer the case.
Press releases tend to be a good way of going about this, as you have the chance of back-links coming into your main post as well. Guest posts also help to generate traffic for both you and the person who’s guest posting. Wrapping links in important keywords is also a clever and natural way to bring in links to your site.
Social media is your friend
While posts and the like are effective, they can only do so much. A good way to augment this strategy is to tap into social media. Sharing your posts via social media will give your brand a nice boost while staying current and effective.
Google is providing real-time social sharing as it happens, which is pretty exciting. In order to take advantage of this, you have to develop a social media presence and then build it up through high quality, regular posts that have to do with things that matter to your user.
Hire a Professional
Boosting your favorable pages and suppressing negative PR can become a time-wasting distraction if your business is recovering from a PR shock, negative SEO, or an influx of negative reviews. Getting your good news noticed can often become an uphill battle. In these situations, it may be worth your while to outsource these efforts to a professional search engine reputation management team. These are specialists who can help your good news rank higher than damaging news by getting negative content removed and optimizing your positive mentions.
While it seems intimidating at first to get your content to rise to the top of the search results, it’s definitely possible, and worth your while. Once you do and take advantage of the tips we’ve shared, you’ll be able to rise straight up to the top of the search results and overcome the impact of negative PR.
