3 pointers by matt cutts on how to maintain your site’s current ranking
Customer conversions, inbound links and traffic are important to make your site known. Your page rank may be higher today but can it keep its current ranking considering the competition in the industry?
Recently, Matt Cutts, who is the head of search spam of Google, answered a specific question about rankings through his Webmaster Help video.
I have been in business for over 14 years with my domain and see much newer domains passing me. Any algorithms to protect older domains/sites in business from newer sites with more spam?
Here are the most important points discussed by Matt on why some older websites may not be able to maintain their rankings on Google. These pieces of advice by Matt are incredibly useful especially to owners of older websites.
1. Improve your site’s user-experience
According to Matt, some sites that have been around for 15 years are still using their original design templates and the owners haven’t done anything to improve important elements on their site over those years. In other words, they haven’t updated their site’s user interfaces. For Matt, in order to stay competitive, you must keep on upgrading and enhancing your site to improve user experience.
If you don’t, newer sites that offer better user-experience can topple you.
2. Avoid being complacent
It’s true that your site is already well-established and it is highly reliable when it comes to information related to your industry. If your site’s ranking is currently number 1, don’t be too complacent. Don’t think that it’ll always be that way.
Matt said that newer sites are hungrier than yours. This means that they can offer better user-experience. As a result, they can outrank you. If you don’t want this to happen, you must continue to change and adapt to what’s going on in your industry. Changing with the times is important for Google.
3. Do everything you can to maintain your ranking
As previously mentioned by Matt, Google rankings aren’t permanent. This means that yours won’t stay the same forever. It can change tomorrow or the next day. But you can do something about it to maintain your current rankings. How? By working hard the same way you did while you were still obtaining your ranking.
Thus, Matt highly encouraged owners of well-established sites to take a closer look at their sites and get a new perspective. If you’re one of those well-established sites, then you’d need to ask yourself whether or not you’re still providing your visitors the kind of user experience they want.
If your visitors will visit those newer sites that offer great user-experience, they might start leaving you behind and prefer newer sites with the same concept as yours.
Conclusion:
It’s very clear that Google emphasizes on web design and user-experience in its ranking algorithm. Based on Matt’s advice, you must start redesigning your site and aim to provide your visitors the best user-experience they can have when they come and browse your site/blog. Although Google keeps on updating its algorithms for search engine rankings, these points from Matt Cutts will surely help in maintaining your current rankings. And if your site is still new, you might want to consider re-examining your site and make sure that your site offers better user-interaction than your competitors’.
If you want to see and hear Matt’s advice on this matter, here’s a video:
