3 SEO Hacks To Jump To The Top
UPDATE: Video transcript available for ‘3 SEO Hacks To Jump To The Top’.
Whilst we’re waiting for the giant penguin slapping sounds, I thought I’d share with you 3 ways to jump above the organic results.
1. Featured Answers
I touched on this last year when Google’s Gary Illyes was speaking at the State Of Search conference. In case you have not seen a featured answer, they look like this.
So the search was a question which must get asked often enough for Google to grab an answer and put it at the top of the page. Google is all about reducing the time it takes for it’s users to find what they are looking for. In the example above the featured answer has been taken from the no.2 ranking result. I have seen featured answers from sites that rank as low as fourth for the search though. Google says you must ask and answer the question either implicitly or explicitly to be eligible for this position.
2. Google News
Don’t have your own news site? No problems, get your content syndicated to a news site the specialises in your space. For me it is business news sites. If you work your keywords into your article and title and headings you have a great opportunity of appearing in Google news for 48 hours or until there are better stories in your niche. We usually appear in Google news Thursdays and Fridays for the search term SEO.
3. Twitter
Yep Twitter. Since Google started reindexing Twitter last year, the results in the SERPs have evolved a little. Certainly now if you Google someones name and they have an active twitter account their tweets will appear in the search results.
I’ve seen this also for a number of major brands, LEGO & Nordstrom are just a couple I have looked at this morning. What an awesome way to show your brand is actively engaging with their customers and potential customers. I think with right optimisation of an account you could rank for some non brand related phrases as well. Currently Google is only showing tweets that are not addressed to anyone specifically. If you have tried this I’d love to know your results.
UPDATE: This is a phrase I check everyday and it’s the first time I have seen twitter results for it.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
