C (7:28)
So that, that's really the main things that we have here for tip number one, which can segue perfectly into the second one for tip number two. Awesome. Okay, so I originally labeled this interlinking strategy, but like, you know, at the end of the day, let's, let's keep it simple. One of the better, one of the most effective ways, aside from having a very logical and clean site structure, to again boost your visibility, boost the ability for Google to crawl and understand you as an entity, is creating links of organization. And basically what we call that is your interlinking. So a good example is like what we have listed right here, something that's a blog post on your website that's talking about a specific topic. It's not enough to just have that in a little subfolder that kind of lives on its own island. We want to build the semantical authority. That's one of my favorite phrases. And the way that we do that in Google's eyes is by launching a very cohesive and a very smart interlinking strategy. I want to be clear here, it does not do you any good to just link random pages to other random pages. Google will look at that and see is very shoddy SEO. A lot of Times people do this and they end up creating a bunch of duplicate content issues for themselves that create a lot of keyword spamming and keyword stuffing because they're just throwing pages into other pages and putting a anchor text that is a direct keyword match and just kind of like running the gauntlet. That's not necessarily going to help you. There was a day in time where just throwing a bunch of internal links was an easy way to tell Google, hey, this page is really important. This is the one you should be crawling and serving. But those days are gone, right? So we need to be a little bit more smarter, a little bit more diligent as far as creating a strong internal linking structure. And again, I want to tie that back to again, what is the main point, right? Like how do we maximize the possibility of your website being selected to appear based off your content in AI generated search results? This is another one of those benchmark stepping stones. So having a very clean site structure, utilizing subfolders where they make sense, I'm not saying to just throw everything into a subfolder for the sake of it. It needs to be done in the way that makes sense. Right? The same exact thing will apply to your interlinking strategy. So having related content linked out to your more important they could be primary practice area pages, primary location pages, or you know, primary service level pages. It really doesn't matter, you know, what your end goal with that end page is. What matters is all the legwork you put behind it. So again, tying that to your site structure like we, we talked about in tip number one, and what does your actual interlinking strategy look like in tip number two? You could do everything perfectly and have amazing content and have the most amazing on page experience. But if you're not doing that legwork, again, those foundational pieces in the background that are still important, that are still heavily weighted in the way that all the algorithms actually search and evaluate your content, then you're not maximizing your, the performance of your website first and foremost. But in, in a little bit more of an AI term like you're not, you're not maximizing the visibility of your website in a totality. And remember, we're talking about you as an entity. So you know, don't focus on your brand name, don't focus on what you personally have done. Google doesn't care. They care about what your website reflects. So you could be the best lawyer that has been serving your metropolitan area for 45 years. But if you're not doing these things to really Clean house on your digital presence. Google is not going to view you as that very strong and authoritative entity. So strong interlinking structure, it's going to help you create the best type of environment for Google's bots to crawl, index and understand what are the most important pages, how are they the most important, why are they the most important? And seeing everything on the back end, that really boosts the ability for you to show up. So those two things are super important. Again, it's probably not brand new stuff that you guys have never heard before, but you would be surprised how much of this is just not getting hit on because everyone's focusing on the next shiny thing when in reality we have to reverse engineer all that and fundamentals are still at play. And then that would lead me into tip number three that we have for you guys. Okay, I cannot stress this enough. You need to be optimizing your website for Core web vitals performance. At this point, I am going to safely assume that everyone that is on this call that was interested in learning about this, understands or has heard of at the very minimum, core web vitals and what they are. Core web vitals are the set of metrics that Google themselves have prepared and shown to you. What do we look at to determine a high performing website with a smooth and reliable user experience? And how do we value that against the content on that page for itself or the blinks that point to that page by itself in a vacuum? So Core Way Vitals has been around for at least six years. The reason why I deem this as important as all the other things that we're going to talk to you guys about. Every single algorithm update, there are hundreds that happen every year and there's only a handful that Google will actually tell us that are happening. Every single one of them has been making and showing that Core web vitals is a more heavily weighted ranking factor. So again, it all goes back into your fundamentals. Google views you as an entity. What is Google's number one job? They want to serve the best possible result for whatever query somebody has entered. You could have amazing content, amazing backlinks, decent site structure, good interlinking. But if I get to your website and it takes me 25 seconds to load the biggest piece of content, first contentful paint, then I'm going to bounce right off. I'm not even going to care about anything that you have to offer. That's me, Nikolai, as the human being, as the person. And that's true. If your website takes longer than five seconds, I'm probably leaving Google views it the same exact way and this is becoming a more and more important aspect to their overall ranking algorithm. So it's no longer just how I personally feel or how your customers or potential customers personally might feel. It's literally what they're telling us is important for you to have. So as long as you are paying attention to these things, it's going to help you again maximize the possibility of you being served in AI generated results and anything new that comes further down the pipeline. Strong site structure, very clear, coherent interlinking strategy. Obviously your content needs to be up to par. Your core web vitals importance is just as high as all those other things. So you may have heard this with some of the marketing managers that you're working with or other vendors, but you know, I would encourage you to use the tools that are at your own disposal. Run your website through GTMetrics, run it through Page Speed Insights, find out how you're stacking up. What does Google think of you as an entity? And then those are the questions that you should be asking whoever you're working with. Hey, what are we doing to optimize this? Am I due for a website rebuild? I've been running the same theme for eight years. It works great, it's easy to use, but maybe it's not the most optimized platform to really hit the mark. When we talk about providing a smooth and stable experience not just for your users, but also for the bots that crawl your website, that's really what we care about in the technical world. So we've got it to the point where we have to care about what our website actually looks like. Because again, this is becoming more and more important with every single algorithm update that gets launched. And that's. Yep, those are it for the the first three tips that we have for you guys.