Website words have key role in organic SEO
GOOP Digital’s Geelong SEO team regularly encounters questions about the need for words on our websites, usually from prospective clients who want to make an impression with images and minimal text. They’re big on the old “picture telling a thousand words” approach.
The question about words and websites is one we have to answer every week and the answer is always the same: Words are crucial to organic Search Engine Optimisation – words that both online searchers and Google can read.
Words and credible, quality inbound links are essential elements for Google to rank a website. Simplified, the words match keyword searches and the inbound links confirm the website as a good source of quality information.
GOOP Digital’s organic SEO strategy hinges on words – words that tell the original story about you, your business, your products and your services. It’s a strategy that works and is a strategy which allows our clients to actually boost their site’s Google performance by adding SEO-enhancing words of their own through features such as blogs, news posts, events, projects and reviews, to name a few.
Latest research suggests that 50 percent of all online searches will be voice searches on mobile phones by 2020 and the more words on your website, the better chance you have of matching a voice search. Remember, searches made by speaking into a smartphone app are much more detailed than typed searches, largely because it’s much easier to speak than type.
Why do I need words on my website?
- Words tell the story about the unique products and services you offer.
- Words provide Google with information about your business and your products and services.
- Google uses words on your website to rank the site in relation to the words people are using to search for the products and services you provide.
- Words ensure Google presents your websites to new clients searching for the products and services you provide, not your business name. Words on your website open you up to a new world of potential clients.
- Words enable your website to rank organically without the need for paid techniques such as dubious backlinking.
- As voice searches on mobile devices become more popular, the more words on your website, the better your website’s chance of matching a voice search query.
- Words are a way clients can take charge of and boost the SEO and Google prominence of their websites.
Without words Google has to rely on other elements such as incoming links to rank your site. No doubt linking is a powerful tool but links must be legitimate and from credible sites, and bad links to your website will do more harm than good. Web developers who promise high-ranking websites with minimal text content are usually relying on dodgy SEO techniques such as low-quality backlinks from an array of websites that have nothing to do with the services and products you’re providing. They buy irrelevant links from websites set up specifically for backlinking, point the links to your website and cross their fingers. Often this linking technique works but it can be fraught with risk. Google’s link-checking algorithm now works in real time and adding links with little relevance to your website and the products and services you offer could make your site slide down the rankings in the blink of an eye. Really bad backlinking can even earn you a Google penalty which makes your website virtually invisible in the search results, and we’re told recovering from a Google penalty is a nightmare. Ask yourself whether it’s worth the risk.
By the way, if you’re wondering whether your developer has used backlinks on your website, here’s a link to just one of many free online tools that’ll help answer your question: https://smallseotools.com/backlink-checker. Just follow the instructions and check the results for your website. If you see a stack of links to your website that make no sense to you then you can be pretty sure your website’s SEO hinges on a pretty shaky backlinking strategy. If you actually go to the source of some of those links to your site you might even find yourself a little disturbed your business is linked to such websites.
If you want a website that works organically in Google then you need a GOOP Digital website – words and all. Just contact our SEO team in Geelong and find out why a website is one of those situations where a picture is not worth a thousand words.