iGB Affiliate 43 Feb/March 2014 | Page 42

FEATURE content that your site is focused around. A strong social following on Facebook, Twitter and via email subscription lists could be enough to generate sales or traffic that would allow your business to surpass the level of success that you could receive while ranking for one of your main keyword terms within the search engine, and you would have the opportunity to put that content in front of your target market without them having to do any level of searching on a search engine. Build your social presence and interact with your customer base and you could generate a website that would not be completely dependent on organic rankings alone. a desktop computer, a tablet device or a mobile phone, they want the user to be able to access and use your site just as easily as any of the other users. That means that in order to show Google and the other search engines that you are able to offer such an experience, you need to look to structure your site so that you can offer a positive experience whatever their chosen Internet device may be. There are multiple ways to accommodate for tablet and mobile users that access your site, such as opting for responsive website designs that are able to resolve to a screen resolution set by the browsing capabilities of the visitor to your site, a simple and effective way to make sure that your content is accessible to as many interested visitors as possible. Mobile compatibility in 2014 Google is starting to sound like a broken record when it comes to its seemingly generic message to all website owners that are looking to succeed within their search engine rankings: ‘create a user experience that your visitors remember, and we will be happy.’ Almost all of the alterations and changes that search engines are making behind closed doors are geared towards one goal: to stabilise their user base by offering them the very best search experience that they can physically offer. This means that not only are search giants like Google looking to eliminate low quality websites out of their organic search results, but they are looking for websites to cater for all types of search engine user; whether that is someone using 42 iGB Affiliate FEBRUARY/MARCH 2014 Give search engines what they want There are many theoretical pieces of content out there in the community that seem to want to share the secret to search engine ran kings success, but the fact is that there are no shortcuts when it comes to working out what search engines like Google are looking for in terms of the selection of ranking websites. Of course, there are tests, case studies and snake oil sellers out there that claim that they have magically managed to crack the Google algorithms and are willing to share their success story with you, but there are very little substitutes out there that will return the results that you would see if you were to work towards giving the search engines everything that they are looking for. Think about how you will show the search engines that your site is honest by keeping your link profile natural, build brand exposure anywhere that you can in a positive manner, show them that your site is considered to be an authority on a particular subject through the natural links you can gain into your own unique content, and keep the content on your site informational and frequent. Search engine manipulating websites might see significant success over a short period of time, but their dominance will drop as soon as the search engines are able to determine the actions they have taken to break their rules, sending them crashing out of the search results in spectacular fashion. Keep your SEO within the guidelines and rules that the search engines follow, and you can conduct as much of that style of optimisation as you can physically fit into your working day and watch as your site benefits from the upcoming sanctions and updates that continue to be targeted towards those that aim to manipulate the organics. SEO and where you need to focus in 2014 With the continuing fight to clean up their organics, search engines are going to continue to evolve and adapt to new methodologies that seem to be emerging in various industries, including one of the latest link building schemes that sees low quality links built into a site until the benefit is seen and then removed in order to eliminate the penalisation risk. This