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As we talked about in our last post, Why SEO Is Extremely Challenging For Small Business Owners, Google makes changes to their ranking algorithm hundreds of times per year, but makes large changes usually every few years.
In just the past few months, Google made some larger changes to their algorithm, which apparently include taking into account unique content more heavily than ever. This means websites that provide very little value to the internet in terms of unique content are now at a disadvantage over sites that provide fresh, unique content.
But it is also important to remember that this content must be written “properly” for both your readers as well as Google bots when they crawl your website. If your small business has unique content, you’ve figured out about 50% of the puzzle. The other 50% is a bit more complex, and includes proper formatting, densities, headers, titles, meta information, length, word selection, and much more. These attributes are overlooked by just about every small business out there, and are even overlooked by most SEO companies out there.
I’ve seen lots of small business owners and even large business owners who are upset about this change because they have been paying an SEO company for months or years to rank their site, and now their rankings are slipping and traffic numbers aren’t looking good. Some websites have seen declines of as much as 50% in their search traffic. I’m happy to say that this latest algorithm change has actually had a positive effect on our websites, showing that our SEO method is in line with Google’s latest changes. As an example, one website saw about a 15% increase in traffic in the past month since the algorithm change, and has moved up in rankings on several competitive keywords, including moving to the number 1 spot for a keyword with over 25 million competitors.
So the bottom line is this: when your small business chooses an SEO company, make sure you do your homework because not all search engine optimization is the same. Aside from the common white hat vs black hat differences, there are huge differences even among white hat SEO companies that can have huge implications not just for your website’s ranking now, but also into the future. Choose a SEO company that not only ranks well given Google’s current algorithm, but understands and puts time into studying what adds value to the internet in general. By choosing a company that has this type of understanding, such as Simple SEO Group, there’s a much lower chance that future algorithm changes will leave your website dropping in rankings.
To learn more about Simple SEO Group’s small business SEO services, simply submit a free small business SEO analysis and consultation form and one of our small business SEO specialists will prepare a 30 page small business SEO report and schedule a consultation. The question shouldn’t be can my company afford search engine optimization–the real question should be how much longer can our small business continue to go without receiving the added traffic of SEO?
Brendan Egan