It seems as though every year Google changes up what’s most important to help a website rank. That’s its way of keeping businesses on their toes. Orange County companies know that their websites need to be optimized, but how to do it when the rules keep changing? A few years ago HTTP mattered, then it was mobile usability. Next came RankBrain, and at the moment it seems like page speed is what matters most to Google. But certain SEO factors don’t change, and every Orange County business that wants to stay consistently at the top of the rankings should be aware of this.

Every Page Must Have Value

Updates such as Google’s Panda and Fred have ensured that pages on your site without any real value hurt rather than help. You want there to be valuable content about your company, services, and products on literally every page. Pages without that are known as “thin content,” and Google will judge them harshly. When you hire an SEO company, they will immediately focus in on pages that grant you a lower bounce rate and provide content the user will find helpful. Whenever you can answer a question, reinforce the idea of your brand as an authority, or provide some entertainment to the site visitor, all those things help you rank.

Search Intent and Organic Traffic

In 2018, the most SEO-savvy Orange County businesses are the ones that focus on search intent. If you know what most interests your customers, you can craft pages that are like a magnet for organic traffic. If you use Google Analytics, you’ll see that they have updated the search results feature with a multi-intent query section. You can also use sites like User Flow and Site Search to help you. They will give you a detailed breakdown of what keywords and phrases are likely to mean, focusing on intent as well as literal meaning.

SEO is like a puzzle, Orange County, and Google wants the pieces to fit together properly to make the comprehensive whole that is your website. It might sound complicated, but the search giant does try to simplify matters with tools that even a novice website designer or content creator can use. Delve into the analytics and create optimized content, and you should be able to stay on top of the tricky business that is SEO.