How to Keep Your Website Under Google's Good Graces

Over 60% of search engine traffic is driven by Google. With that said, if you are to optimize your website or blog for the search engines, your main focus should be on Google. If you rank well in their search results for your chosen keywords, it will be much easier and quicker for you to achieve your online goals. Now, there's no magic trick in getting into Google's top results. Getting there involves a lot of factors. And of course, there's the algorithm updates that the search engine company rolls out in a regular basis. An effective technique today can be deemed useless tomorrow by an update.

The lesson here is that there is no sure-fire way to rank well in Google. However, there are certain things you can do that can improve your chances of ranking well. Let's take a look into some of these below:

1. Stop trying to game the algorithm.

This is a very common mistake that webmasters make. Sure, it can bring your site instant results but it's never a good strategy in the long run. Sooner or later, Google will catch you and penalize you. That is never a good thing. If you are planning on building a site that you intend on maintaining for years, it's best that you don't resort to "gaming the algorithm" techniques. This is especially true today because Google is getting smarter in catching those trying to game their algorithm. It remains that your best bet is to focus on proven strategies that are beneficial to your site in the long run.

2. Keep your content fresh and updated.

There's a reason why most often than not, blogs rank better than standard websites. This is because they have the element of "freshness" in their content. It makes sense that fresh content should be on top of the search results as they are deemed more valuable and they're likely what the searchers are looking for. This doesn't mean that you should convert your standard website into a blog. What you need to do is create new content for your site or update the existing ones. Google loves fresh and updated content. As a webmaster, that's a fact you should always keep in mind.

3. Be original.

If there's one thing that Google hates the most, it's duplicate content. It's never a good idea to harbor content in your website that are copied or even similar to what other sites have. It doesn't matter if you republished the content with the permission of other webmasters. That isn't the point. The point is that if you want your site to be valuable to your target audience, you need to create your own original content. If you have high-quality and optimized original content, the good Google rankings will surely follow.

4. Get rid of low-quality or low-performing pages.

Sometimes, it's best that you clean up your site and get rid of low-quality pages as they can hurt your site overall. They can pull down the other pages that are doing well. In effect, this is similar to keeping your content fresh and updated.

These four simple strategies can help improve your Google rankings if you follow them well and often. Search engine optimization services can help you rise to the top and get the online traffic that you’re looking for. However, it takes consistent effort and hard work to achieve these results.