SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a measure to make your website appear at the top of search results when users search for keywords using search engines. If your website is ranked high, you can expect a lot of access, so SEO measures for your website are essential in order to get conversions (results) from natural searches.
There are approximately 7,000 websites on Google, but the conditions for a Google site to appear in a search are the same as for any other website. Therefore, the Google team, like other companies, needs to keep up with the latest trends in Google search, and as a company, we are seriously working on SEO measures.
In this article, we will introduce three points that Google is working on to maximize the effectiveness of SEO.
Point 1. Continuing small efforts
It takes a lot of small efforts to achieve big results with SEO. Google believes that diligently implementing SEO measures for your website will ultimately lead to great results.
Google My Business’ marketing site doubled its organic search traffic after improving SEO. The SEO measures taken by the team included normalizing the URLs to be indexed to search engines, updating the sitemap, and improving metadata. Although there was a periodic drop, the increase in traffic can be attributed to the implementation of SEO measures.
There is not necessarily a causal relationship between increased traffic and SEO measures. However, according to Google, many websites that use SEO have seen an increase in organic search traffic. Although it is not possible to prove a causal relationship, it can be said that SEO measures are having an effect.
However, it takes some time for the effects of SEO measures to appear, and there is no immediate effect. Even if you don’t see immediate results, it’s important to continue making small efforts.
Point 2. Actively introduce new features
Google Search offers new features such as AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) and PWA (Progressive Web Apps). These were developed to address current user exploration behavior, where more than half of website traffic comes from mobile searches.
As many users use mobile search, mobile optimization is an essential measure to maximize the effectiveness of SEO.
There are examples where keeping up with and responding to changing user behavior can have a positive impact on SEO.
According to Google, the number of impressions for target sites increased by 200% as a result of implementing SEO measures to support the new search function. Furthermore, we found that improving the quality of your content will increase the frequency with which it will be selected as a featured snippet (*).
*Featured snippet: A mechanism that displays a clear answer to a search at the top of the Google search screen. Answer parts are extracted from highly reliable websites.
The important thing in SEO is to provide content that is valuable to users. To increase the effectiveness of SEO, you need to provide content that is more relevant to the information users are looking for. If user satisfaction increases with the introduction of new technologies such as AMP and PWA, it will eventually lead to better results in SEO.
Point 3. Website integration
We may create duplicate, similar websites to accommodate different users.
However, if you create duplicate content, it will confuse both “users” and “search engines”, which are important for SEO, and SEO will not be effective.
To increase organic search traffic, it is more effective to improve the quality of your content on one website than to launch multiple websites with similar content.
Google has reviewed its sites with duplicate content, abolished six websites, and merged them into one website. As a result, click-through rates for call-to-action phrases doubled, and organic search traffic increased by 64%.
There are three evaluation criteria that Google emphasizes: “expertise,” “authority,” and “reliability.” Even if you create a number of duplicate websites, you can’t compete with just one high-quality website that meets your evaluation criteria.
summary
◆SEO is a measure to make your website appear at the top of the search results when users search for keywords using search engines.
◆To make the most of the effects of SEO, there are three points below.
1. Continuation of small efforts
SEO measures do not produce immediate results, but small efforts that continue can lead to big results in the end.
2. Actively introduce new features Now that mobile search is becoming mainstream, implementing new technologies such as AMP and PWA for mobile optimization can have a positive impact on SEO. It also leads to improved user satisfaction.
3. Website Integration Rather than launching multiple websites with duplicate content, it is more effective to create a single, high-quality website that will bring out the SEO effect.