How much does relevance impact your SERP?

You probably already know that optimizing your online content is crucial for success in the richly-competitive online world. Effectively-formatted, well-written better content is more likely to drive traffic to your blog or site. That traffic is how you’ll build a customer base.

But is your content relevant? Relevancy doesn’t just apply to blog posts and long-form content. Google analyzes every aspect of your site, including keywords, h1 tags, and meta-descriptions, along with body content, to display your site to applicable searchers.

Are you maximizing your relevancy online? How much does it really matter?

1. What is Relevancy?

Relevancy used to be a simple formula to determine how much of your content matched any given user search. That is, which of your content keywords matched query keywords, and so on.

The essence of the term hasn’t changed, but modern algorithm changes like Google’s Hummingbird mean that these days, search engines are a little smarter. Google’s base algorithm can now discern search intent and displaying highly fine-tuned search results, rather than displaying the same results for any query at any given time. This way, search results are designed to fill a need, every time.

These relevancy updates impact on how your content appears to searchers. For example, if you publish a blog post written about the best places to visit in LA, but your company is a New-York based firm, your content is unlikely to be marked by Google as relevant to LA travel tips—even though you’ve published an article on the topic.

Relevancy is more than just keywords. Analyze your site themes, niche market, and overall optimization to maximize your relevancy score for potential customers.

2. Local Relevance Improves Local Search Results

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s important to remember to keep your information updated to stay relevant in your local area.

Local searches are potential gold mines for brick-and-mortar businesses like physical retailers and restaurants. A search for “Thai restaurant near me,” “vintage record store,” or “hair salon” can lead local searchers directly to your online better content, because Google’s algorithm is smart enough to match area businesses with area consumers. One hitch: your information must be current to stay relevant.

This tactic can also be useful for online-only services that target a specific geological area. Say you’re an online-only tax company, but you want to service Florida particularly. You can fine-tune your relevancy through keywords and site optimization to encourage Google to show your information specifically to Tampa Bay residents who search “taxes” and maximize your own target audience.

3. Current Traffic Drives New Traffic

Google shows priority to heavily-trafficked sites, because the engine sees frequent visitors as a sign of relevancy and success. When a website grows in popularity, it signals to Google that something’s going right. You should be doing everything you can to ensure you’re using the most powerful keywords possible.

This also means you shouldn’t limit your SEO relevancy efforts to keywords. Think outside the box: reach out to websites that discuss your industry and ask if they’d like to publish a write-up on your services. Get in contact with businesses offering similar or complementary services and see if they’d like to collaborate with you on some content. By driving traffic to your website through methods other than exclusively online searches, your SEO will skyrocket.

Relevancy helps push your business up in Google’s page results, but it’s also a powerful tool for business growth. Make sure you’re always incorporating the newest developments to get the most out of your SEO rankings.

Conclusion

Is your company in need of help? MV3 Marketing Agency has numerous Marketing experts ready to assist you. Contact MV3 Marketing to jump-start your business.

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