7 Top SEO Tips for 2022: How to Make Google Love You Now

Searching for marketing ideas to drive growth? In this blog post, we review our seven top SEO tips for 2022 to make Google love you.

#1 Be Credible

Does your site build credibility? Does it show your authentic team and does it build a relationship with the people who you are targeting? Does it feel professional? Could you do a photo shoot of your team and stop using so many stock images? Are your team members on your website and does that include bio’s of those team members with their backgrounds and some of their credentials? Is it clear what you’re selling? Utilize the caveman test (or grit test) from StoryBrand: if a caveman looked at your website, could he tell what you’re selling? Could he tell people how it benefits him and how does he buy it? Your website and your content should also be free of errors to build credibility.

#2 Write for People

When you create content and copy, write for humans, not for search engines. Answer user’s questions to help people find what they’re looking for using simple language, and short sentences no more than 20 words long. Your website should clearly show what you do and how, how you solve your target audience’s challenges and pain points. You should show that you recognize what their pain points are. A good way to get some good content is to ask your sales team about common objections, why people don’t choose you or common pain points people have before they come and look for what you are selling. Be sure to not use jargon!

#3 Get Testy

Do a user experience test of your website and your content. Get someone who doesn’t know you to interact with your website and observe them while they’re in there acting with your website. Ask them questions like, can you find our services? What are our services? What are we selling? Could you find our testimonials? Can you see how to interact with us? Can you see how to book a meeting with us? Can you see how to use the contact us, you know, questions like that? Be sure that the person who’s looking at it can understand your language. You can also use tools like usertesting.com and run a very affordable test with people who are complete strangers to you with an honest perspective. 

>>Not sure how to test your website for SEO? Use these questions. 

Another important thing about being testy is to audit your own content. Look at your Google analytics. Is there content with really high bounce rates that should probably be rewritten to answer user’s questions, or are there blog posts with zero visits? Those should probably be removed.

#4 Chip Away

Put down the bag of potatoes and chip away at your core pages! Optimize them at a rate of three to four a week as part of a robust SEO strategy. Start with keyword research. You can use a tool like keyword planner, like Google’s, to research your top terms and download and build a list. You can also research your competitors there. Be sure to not use the exact same keyword on more than one page. Another big tip is to use freebies, like Yoast, the plugin on WordPress, to guide you SEO updates. Yoast gives you a cheat sheet of what you need to do on every page and post on your website.

#5 Content

Tip number five is to develop a content strategy to rank well. Google likes to see fresh content all the time and that you have more pages with your keywords on them all the time. Create a targeted content plan to capture those longer tail keywords. The way to develop a content plan is to start by listing your target audience. Who are you trying to target and think about them? What are their pain points and what are their goals? Then think about one of them and ask what questions they may have. What can you share or what can your team share that they know that answers their questions? Brainstorm five to 10 topics against each target, then match that up with that keyword list you made and strategically create a content plan to go after those keywords. Additionally, your business needs to be authoritative, which can be boosted through content. If you have thought leaders in your company, interview those thought leaders and create useful content that shares their unique insights and great stories.

#6 Speed Matters

The speed at which your website loads matters more than ever. Remove anything that is slowing down your website, like large pictures that haven’t been compressed. You can run free reports for guidance on what to improve; we like Google page speed insights which gives a list of what you need to do in order to speed up your website. Be sure to also leverage browser caching.

#7 Give Link Juice

Links continue to matter more and more to search engines like Google. Your goal is to get inbound links from credible sources. Where you start is you’re going to link out to good content and then request links back to your content. A pillar post is a great place to put several links to credible sources. Then your deep-level content will get you links back. A neat way to obtain inbound links is through guest posts on other blogs, or by doing a customer series interview. Be sure to leverage your social media as well as your clients’ and providers’ social media.

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Missed our webinar on how to make Google love you in 2022? Watch the replay here.