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Semalt: How To Make Google Love Your Site By Being an Authoritative and Searchable Source of Information


Some people say that love is fickle. 

But if I were you, I would stop listening to those people.

Instead, I would like to focus on real goals. 

We are talking about your goals for your website. Maybe you have been burned before. It could be your second or third attempt to start a working website. Many people give up after not being able to find the right traffic. It is only natural, but there is a way out of it. 

Through the power of positive thinking, we want to help you re-ignite your passion with a quick guide in establishing a website that Google will love. Going forward, you will be the foremost authority in your subject. Without believing that fact, your website will hit the same walls. 

What to Do Before You Start


Before creating a website, there are a series of steps that you need to keep in mind. First of all, think of this website as your business. If this is your passion, you need to have a clear plan of action. 

We will start with a common question.

What Do You Want to Do?

You probably already have an idea of what you want to do. If not, it is time to brainstorm. Ask yourself important questions about where your passions lie. After this, you will need to refine your idea. 

Perhaps you would like to start a food blog as a full-time job. It is a competitive market that you are going to need to find a way to differentiate yourself. You can make money through affiliate products. Define whether or not you are going to go to local restaurants or cook the food yourself. What about food makes you passionate? Do you enjoy the experience of eating the food or the process of preparing the food? 

By knowing what makes you passionate, you can move onto the next area: how are you going to make money with this? Do you wish to delve into affiliate marketing? It is a lucrative option. Maybe you want to sell how-to books on cooking recipes that you have developed. With all of these questions, the idea is to narrow things down as much as possible.

Perform Research

If you are seeking to start a business, chances are someone else has already done it. By performing research on the successes and failures, you will be able to find a common factor of success and failure. Once you find this, utilize your skill set to see how you can improve on other's projects.

You may find an opportunity to create a podcast that recreates popular Asian food dishes. Find out how other podcasts can go on for four hundred episodes while others end after ten. You will need to know what people are looking for to be effective at what you do.

Create a Plan For Any Situation


When you create a website, you need to consider a business plan. It is an absolute necessity for anyone who wants to get serious. A business plan creates a plan of action for what you plan on doing over the next several months. Week one can is research time, week two is refining your income sources, and week three is deciding upon your blog's name and design. 

It will be up to you how long you want to spend working on the planning phase. But you will want to make a plan for any situation. As disappointing as it may be, you may also want to make an exit strategy. You can only stand a certain threshold of failure. It can happen with any venture, including a food blog.

Be Constant and Consistent

 
When it comes to starting anything new, you will want to create a schedule that works for you. A posting schedule, an "active hours" schedule, or a plan for how many sales you want to make a week. The terms will change depending on the activity, but setting goals is healthy regardless.

It may take you a couple of tries to realize what a typical week will look like for you. For example, selling 50 insurance policies a week as a salesperson is pretty rare, so you may not want to take your best week. Try going with the average amount of sales or achievements you have per week as a good starting point.

You will also need to perform any of the other maintenance activities regularly done. For example, blog runners try and reach out to a handful of people to offer guest blogs. This creation isn't their content, but doing so often means that you are continually performing the "under the hood" maintenance needed to support your practice.

How Do I Establish Myself as an Authority?

One of the most challenging tasks to follow through with on the internet is becoming an authority. This fact is doubly, so when it comes to content production, as everyone and their dog has a blog that they are trying to grow. Regardless of what your main business is, content production is necessary. So below are some tips to consider when establishing yourself as the authority. 

Have a Consistent Content Schedule


While we mentioned this a couple of headings ago, I'm going to repeat it, given the level of importance it holds.  Without a regular schedule of content released onto your website, viewers will see you as inconsistent. Google will as well, as the more high-quality content that appears on your site, the higher chance you have of ranking on search.

Make Your Expertise Clear on Guest Blogs

If you manage to catch that elusive guest blog spot, this is your opportunity to flaunt your credentials. If you have been blogging a while, mention the years you've been doing it. If you have a long list of thriving jobs to talk about, talk about the one with the most success.  Be sure that your bragging rights are acceptable for the guest blogger. You want to have something standard set on the side as your guest blog profile.

Be Active in Your Niche

If you do not regularly study those in your niche, you aren't going to be on top of the latest trends. Better yet, reach out and speak to those in your niche. Having regular conversations with other experts in the field will bolster your skillset.  Also, you will be able to brainstorm new content ideas and find an easy in for posting on shared blogs. 

How Do I Become Searchable?

Your path to the top will become more accessible by following the prior advice. As a result, getting Google to want to share your content will be far easier naturally.  However, the journey to becoming searchable has only begun; you need to win the war on SEO. We will go through the lite guide here, for a more in-depth guide, check out Semalt's Must Bookmark Guide on SEO.

Be Aware of Modern Formatting Practices

A key to being listed on Google is to take advantage of their formatting requirements. These days, one must be aware of how gets to the top of these lists while also reaching the "featured snippet" section. This section is typically listed above the top ten search results, making them more valuable in a lot of ways.

Utilize your h2 and h3 tags for easy sorting. Utilize tables when appropriate for your content. Provide numbered lists without any parenthesis at the beginning. Be as direct and short as possible. These are just a few things to keep in mind, keep an eye on those who hit the top slots to be sure of the latest formatting practices for your niche.

Focus on Keywords in the Overall Topic


Keywords are Google's bread and butter. Keywords allow your site to be on the list of relevant topics. However, we caution you not to focus too hard on these keywords, as that can cause the standard error of keyword stuffing.  Keyword stuffing is overusing your keyword to the point where Google no longer finds your site appealing. 

By focusing on a variety of keywords in a topic spread, it allows you to avoid this issue. Also, you can target other keywords in the same niche.  The factors behind SEO, as it applies to keywords, change often.  Keep an eye on influencers in the area to be sure of updates. The Semalt blog will also be keeping an eye on the latest trends.

Utilize Informational Mark-Ups

The website schema.org states that by putting your website in a specific schema, or informational category, will help you in your search. It is especially true for those who have local businesses. Many of these categories include location, hours of business, and product categories. 

While it requires some knowledge of HTML, it is relatively simple to use the on-site guides on categorizing your business. By extension, be sure to claim your business on Google if you have a physical headquarters. 

Hire an SEO Specialist

You have done everything you can to reach out to the right people and have established yourself as a trustworthy authority in your niche.  Despite all this effort, websites sometimes are unable to travel over that hump. For your business, this is why it is essential to invest in a trained specialist.

Semalt's team of SEO specialists can help your website turn the vital corner. It needs to be noticeable. All of the other work you put into it will contribute to making Semalt's efforts far easier. 

Conclusion

If you are like most of us, Google had burned us all before back before we understood what it wanted. While it may not have been love at first "site," it turned into something magical.

Much like real relationships, you have to establish yourself as a definite object of desire. By having a business plan of action and a clear path to building yourself as an authority, you give yourself an excellent start.

SEO, being the first and the last step, is a bit more tricky. Some formatting guidelines and markups make things easier, so we do suggest starting there. When you start here, be sure to reach out to Semalt to see how we can bring you to the next level.