Factors that Do Not Directly Affect Google Rankings

Factors that Do Not Directly Affect Google Rankings 

When you start building your website and setting it up to get higher Google rankings, you may think that everything you do with the site will have a direct effect. Over time, it has been found that this is not entirely true. While Google has not come right out with a list of things that make a website rank higher on their search engine, through trial and error and some programming knowledge, others have created that list for you!

Non-ranking factors are things that do not have a direct affect on your Google rankings. Virtual Market Advantage will go over a few of them here. Just keep in mind that the parameters for Google rankings are subject to change at any time, as the company is constantly working to tweak and improve their system.

The Age of Your Website

Google does not care if you registered your website back in 2008 or as recently as 2017. The age of your website does not directly affect your Google rankings. What they do care about is how much your content actually helps people, and that you have inbound and outbound links and authority signals.

However, there is a correlation that comes into play between these factors. If a website is still going strong today after 10 years, the chances are good that it has built up lots of links and authority over that time. Since these are not things that can be built up instantly (building links and good authority takes time), there is an indirect effect of age on ranking.

If you do build up these strong links with a site that you registered just two years ago, Google could reward that site more than one that took over 10 years to develop to the same level. This is because you built up this authority over a small period of time versus a longer one, and indicates that the information is relevant to current online audiences.

Using Google Apps and Services

The idea that if you offer Google apps and services on your website it will immediately help your rankings is simply is not true. Your decision to use or not to use these on your site will not help or hurt your Google page rankings in any direct way.

Google apps and services are tools that are up to you to offer and use. Google doesn't reward websites that offer them more than the websites that do not. If you’re leery of using these apps due to privacy issues, rest assured that Google does not use them to look in on your site in any way (though Google does keep metric data in plenty of other ways).

Likes, Shares, and Tweet Counts

You put a Facebook share counter on your website. That’s great if you want to share that information with your visitors or you want another way to keep track. That’s all it will be though. Google does not care that you are using visible social media counters when it comes to SEO.

If the people on that Facebook share counter end up doing other activities that lead to more browser activity on your site, links, or brand awareness, Google does care about that. So this can indirectly have an effect if it alters viewer behavior. But it does not directly affect Google rankings. You don’t need to purchase Facebook shares in hopes of a higher Google website ranking. Just those shares alone will not help your Google ranking.

Bounce Rate and Time On-Site

If you get on your Google Analytics and see that the average time a visitor is on your site is only for about a minute, do not freak out and worry that it will hurt your Google page rank.

There are several factors that can lead to a shorter visit. Maybe your page loads at a faster rate, allowing the visitor to find what they need quickly and be on their way. Or they may have reached your site from another location and are just doing a quick browse. In general, time spent on the site by visitors (or the bounce rate) does not directly affect your Google website ranking.

Re-Submitting a Site

Once a search engine knows about your site, they know about it. It’s indexed and will not be forgotten. It may be low in the search results, but it will always be there somewhere. So there is no point in continuing to re-submit the site repeatedly. Google or any other search engine will not rank your site higher simply because you keep filling out a form.

You only need to complete a submission form once, and then use the other tools on your site to help your Google ranking.

Having a Dedicated IP Address

A web address is a web address. Taking the time to give your website its very own IP address will not affect your Google ranking. It will not improve the search results to elevate a site that has a separate IP address. So don’t take the extra time to do this step, and put that time into an area that will actually help you rank higher in Google.

Using Shared Hosting or Inexpensive Hosting Options

Shared hosting and inexpensive hosting options will not directly affect your website unless it hurts the loading speed. If the hosting does not hurt this, then one hosting provider is just as good as any other. If it works well for you, then there is no reason to pay more to use solo hosting. There is no reason to worry about the SEO, as it will not directly affect Google rankings of your site.

While there are many myths out there about the algorithm of Google and what helps your rankings and what does not, the list above contains just some of the things that are known to not have a direct effect. Take the time to build a site that works for you and your business. Just remember that some things are a ranking factor and some things are not.

If you want more information on how to improve your SEO, check out these blogs from Virtual Market Advantage: SEO Tips for Small Businesses, How to Improve Your Business’s Advertising and Marketing, and Long Tail Keywords.

Picking Colors for Your Brand

Picking Colors for Your Brand 

The colors you choose for your brand have a larger impact on the performance of your product than you may think. These colors should also carry over to your website to make your entire brand come together, both online and off. Although you can hire a professional designer if you want to, the only cost you have to put into this choice is the time to really know your product and its customers.

While you choosing, it can be easy to go overboard with your colors by choosing too many or using colors that are just too intense or clash with each other. It’s best to be simple as you’re carefully picking colors that will be associated with your brand. Let’s go over a few things you can do to choose the best colors for your company and get the most out of them for your brand.

Minimize Your Colors for a Maximum Impact

There’s an old adage that less is more. This holds true as you are picking colors for your brand. The whole goal as you pick your brand colors is that you want prospects and customers to subconsciously remember your colors and associate them with your business in a positive way.

If you want these customers to remember you, it’s best to not give them too long a list of colors to remember. In order to accomplish this, you should bring down your color choices to two main colors.

How to Choose Your Two Main Brand Colors

Start by finding some color inspiration. Don’t just look at lists of colors. Pay attention to all of the colors around you in the world, whether it’s in nature or in man-made items, television, and advertising. It’s likely as you start looking that you'll find certain colors that you gravitate towards. As you keep finding things that draw you to them, look for the similarities in the colors and find what they all have in common.

After you have created a color palette of the colors that you are drawn towards, start to narrow that down to just six colors. As you look at these colors, figure out which ones go best together and compliment each other. There may be a couple of colors that are too similar, so go ahead and pull one of those out of your color palette to make your decision easier.

You need to ultimately find two colors that are similar in tone: you would want each color in the pair to have a bright, dark, or neutral tone. Try and stay away from pairs that have a dark color paired with a pale color. Finding contrasting colors will come in later when you look for accent colors.

Also make sure that the colors fit your business. For example, you might personally be attracted to dark blues and purples, but if your business sells lighting, this is probably not the tone you really want. Or maybe you really love how your logo looks in pink, but most of your audience is masculine. Always keep your audience in mind when making any choices for your business!

Once you have found your two main colors and you feel that they not only work well together but also fit with your brand, it’s time to put them to use in all of your marketing materials. This is where you find out how well these colors will actually work together. During this step, you can tweak the colors a little here and there to make sure they work, but in the end, everything needs to have the same colors across the board.

Add Your Accent Colors

Picking colors for your accent takes your palette to a new level. Remember that color palette you made of six colors to pick your two main colors from? Take a look at the colors that are left over and see if one of those could fit in as your accent color. Sometimes this can work, but other times it looks too similar to your main choices.

Use your two main colors consistently throughout your branding and your marketing. These are the main colors that customers will associate with your brand and your brand identity. Now you need to find the color that will pop from the rest of your page. This accent color should stand out because it’s brighter, darker, or different in some other way from your main colors.

Once you see your main colors consistently on your brand and its marketing, your accent color should come fairly easily. Look for that bright color to jump out at you from among the other two main colors. If you are really stumped at this step, it can be very helpful to take a look at color combination guides and color wheels.

When picking colors, the important part is to remember to keep your color palette small with just your two main colors and one accent color. Using too many colors can make it look like the colors are competing with each other. You do not want the customer’s attention to focus more on the branding colors than your product.

Picking colors for your brand can be a long process to make sure you choose the right ones, but do not get discouraged. Once you find those perfect colors, you will know. Keep in mind through this process that these colors will become your brand identity, so take your time and make sure it's exactly what you want and works for your brand!

If you want to further improve your business’s advertising and marketing after choosing your branding, check out Virtual Market Advantage’s blog here!

How to Improve Your Business’s Advertising and Marketing

Within the history of business, copywriting, advertising and marketing, there comes a history of a friendly competition. With everything from the type of product or service to the ads a company runs to get its customers, there is certain to be another business out there doing nearly the same thing. Businesses use the same concepts and tools for their copywriting and design, but there are differences to be seen in the land of marketers and advertisers. By knowing this difference, you can create better copy for your business's ads and content.

Advertising and marketing seem like one in the same, right? People use advertising to market a product. But the truth is, both of these tools are used to help each other in slightly different ways. Sure, you will see the ad for the product, but when you go to the website to purchase what have seen, you are looking at marketing content. Marketing provides copy for the pages on the website as well as content such as blogs written about the product. When it comes to advertising and marketing, you must have one in order to get the full effect of the other.

The Written Word

Before the world of shared videos on LinkedIn or seeing those ads on Facebook, the only way to share what you wanted people to know about was by different types of written copy. Newspapers tossed in your driveway, marketing postcards sent to your mailbox, and other sources of physical copy ruled advertising.

Using written copy in a non-digital world had its share of unknowns. This being a business’s only means of content marketing meant that they waited for longer periods of time to see any feedback from the marketing campaign. Having to wait and see if these new ideas would work led these businesses to a wide range of failures and successes. There were few that made it out successfully and could go on to share how they made it work. The great thing is, if we look at that information today, it can still ring true for modern content marketing. If you want more information on using old-fashioned methods to help your content, check out Virtual Market Advantage's blog here.

The Materials Used for Marketing

When you look at types of marketing, you will see that one of the biggest differences between advertising and marketing is the length of the material involved in each. Ads are there to quickly grab your attention within the typical seven seconds that a person gives to something that they see. If you then go talk to a content marketer, you will quickly learn that they hope to earn the greater attention of their audience with informative, thoughtful content. Ads are meant to quickly manipulate you into looking further into something or going for the impulse buy, while content is meant to be informative and build a trusting relationship with the audience.

While you may think that content and copy will be long and drawn out, that is not always the case. You can create shorter sentences for dramatics, as well as get your point across with fewer sentences and paragraphs. Just because you hear the words 'content' or 'copy' does not mean it will be a long and boring read. There are many times where content can give the audience just as much impulse to buy as an ad, all while giving the customer just that much more information before the purchase.

Empathy – The Key to Content Marketing

Advertisements are meant to be seen briefly, which means they can sometimes come across as untrustworthy (and sometimes are). Content marketers like to think that the job they do goes beyond that level and really gets in touch with the audience.

Think about it this way: would you lie to your family to get them to buy something? No? Then why would you go and lie to someone else? It’s easy to lose that sense of caring for the audience when you, the marketer, are just simply out there competing with the other companies. It’s easy to want to grab the attention of your audience fast instead of sending them a nice welcome with your content.

When you are developing your marketing strategy, think about how you come across to your audience. Are you just building a revolving door, hoping to catch that one sale? Or are you there to answer questions and guide that potential customer to a sale as well as create a long-time customer? Both ways can work for your business, but creating a revolving door feeling to your copy can leave a bad taste with your visitors and word will get around. If you are stuck on finding ways to make your content more authentic, try and pull from personal experience and place that into your ad copy.

Working Past the Rivalry

While there will always be the debate of how to deal with close competitors, there are ways to work together as advertisers and marketers. Sure, advertising looks different than it did in the twentieth century, we can still look to its wisdom for content creating today and collaborate to create better content all around.

You can get to your audience quickly without shying away from quality content. Being authentic with your audience will always get you more leads and clicks in the long run. You want those clicks to be real interactions and not just a person passing through your revolving door. Your data needs to reflect who your audience actually is. Allow for the content marketers to work through and come up with what works best and learn to better understand and appreciate the traditions in advertising that still work today.