At Appletree we provide marketing support for our clients across many activities, from planning strategy to writing blogs and social media updates. Increasingly, we achieve great SEO results not because we are working to a strategy to achieve this end goal, but as a result of the work we do. In a recent marketing review meeting with a client it was great to receive thanks from the client who have seen more people finding their website, and more of the right people – their target market.

We provide a range of activities for this client, including writing and delivering an e-newsletter. We drive traffic to the newsletter and the company website by linking it each month to their social media. This gives them effective and cohesive activity on a regular basis. We also update their website regularly with new, relevant case studies, and make reference to these case studies in the newsletters. Delivering regular content across the internet for this client has achieved some great results for them.

What?s encouraging is that these activities are increasingly effective for SEO. In a previous blog I wrote about why you should write for your customer, not the search engines, and this is even more relevant today with the recent Google updates. Updates to search criteria are being made all the time, the most recent ones are to me, are the biggest indicator that genuinely clever marketing will be rewarded by favourable ranking positions.

Here are the main activities Google currently now use to rank sites.

1. Content. Here I go again, content is king. In order for your website to be performing to its utmost, you must constantly add fresh, valuable, relevant information. Writing a regular blog, newsletter, or case studies is a great way to do this, as long as they are relevant to your business. Giving industry news, advice and tips is one of the best ways to do this.

2. Use social media sites regularly. Using content to engage with people via social media is seen very favourably by the search engines – they are looking for ‘social signals’. It’s also a great way to find new readers of your content and build relationships with existing and potential clients.

3. Link building. This used to be an exercise carried out for the sake of it – so called SEO experts would fill your site with lots of external links just to improve your site rankings. Now it only works if those links are relevant to the content of your site and what your company offers. Use keywords in the anchor text to external links via your content in your web copy, blogs and case studies and the search engines will reward it. Ensure that the links are updated regularly (again this is where newsletters are fantastic), and vary the keywords in the anchor links.

Have you seen changes in your website rankings recently? Leave a reply below to let me know, I’m always keen to hear other people’s SEO stories!