Google's SEO strategy: 3 methods we use for best SEO results

As a company, we devote quite a lot of time to thinking about search engine optimization or short name SEO. Of course, this is not surprising given that searching is the basis of our business.

Of course, there are many other ways to drive traffic to your website. Paid media, social media and display advertising are just a few of them. However, when implemented well, SEO can provide an important and cost-effective strategy for organic growth. In fact, the latest study by the web analytics company Parse.ly shows that Google Search provided approximately half of the external referrals to publishers on the company's network last year.

However, it's important to follow the latest Google Search updates to get the most out of SEO. This is also true for Google. At Google, we own 7,000 websites managed by hundreds of products and marketing teams worldwide. More than 200 changes are made to these websites every day, each of which is likely to affect a site's SEO. When we consider how Google sites appear in Search, we see that they are treated the same as any other site on the web, and our teams follow the external guidelines provided to web experts.

Therefore, no matter what new changes are implemented, we have implemented a unifying website SEO strategy that we can trust and can be a tutorial for anyone who owns the website.

1. Start with small steps to get great SEO results
This may sound simple, but focusing on making small, incremental changes to a website's overall SEO strategy can make noticeable gains over time. For example, the Google My Business marketing site 1 has nearly doubled organic traffic, partly because the team has implemented a set of web best practices, such as showing standards to search engines which URLs are indexed.

Of course, the relationship does not always mean causality, but a number of Google sites have achieved effective organic growth after making these simple SEO changes.

Search Console's new URL checking tool is a great starting point if you're having trouble identifying some of the issues your site may be experiencing.

2. Don't be afraid of changes, embrace them

Search features are constantly changing to reveal the most relevant content to users and to keep up with the changing behavior of users. Today, for example, more than 50% of website traffic comes from mobile devices, and Google Search has responded quickly to new developments such as AMP and Progressive Web Applications.

These changes can be intimidating, but the more we embrace and experiment with these changes within the company, the better we have achieved our SEO results. For example, last year, we implemented structured data with a focus on correcting Google Search Console errors and added AMP to Think with Google. After correcting a common AMP error in a set of URLs, we observed a 200% increase in these impressions. In addition, we've found that improving our content in general may have led us to be selected more frequently for snippets that stand out, leading to 1,000 additional impressions per day.

3. Assemble, where possible

It can be an attractive idea to target different customer profiles or geographic areas by creating multiple websites, each with highly similar content. We even did it within Google. As a result of a recent audit, we've found that over the years, we've developed a large number of sites that are almost replicating, based on different campaigns or marketing objectives.

The problem with this approach is that duplicate content is both confusing for users and complex for search engines. Creating a large site instead of multiple micro sites is the best way to promote organic growth over time.

For example, after this site audit, we've decided to completely reconsider our marketing websites for Google Retail. By cleaning up six old websites, consolidating content, and focusing our energy on a major website, we've doubled the site's call-to-action clickthrough rate and increased organic traffic by 64%.

The lesson is very clear: Even if the performance on the page is important, a successful SEO strategy needs to take into account the entire web ecosystem.

Implement Google's SEO strategy to your website
Like other companies, Google can sometimes take the wrong steps in SEO. We are constantly working to make improvements to our own sites. However, by focusing on these three areas, we were able to create an SEO strategy that was flexible enough to adapt to new changes, robust enough to deliver effective results, and adaptable to all websites.

Ready to implement your own SEO strategy? Learn more from our SEO getting started guide.