By Georgina Stamp

As the leader of an online business there are many responsibilities that you carry upon your shoulders; one of these is ensuring that your business survives each and every hurdle that Google has to throw at it. Most of these obstacles come in the form of changes to the way in which Google works and how it views and verifies the authority of websites. In order to efficiently lead your business through Google’s changes you need only follow these straightforward steps.

1. Your Website

Your main priority during Google’s updates should be the functionality of your website; ensuring that it’s clean, easy to use with plenty of unique content that’s appropriate for your target audience.

Google analyses each page of your site and estimates whether it is useful for a user so key aspects include content that is exclusive to your website and text that is not stuffed with search terms that you would like to rank for. With a strong focus on content, you should look at adding a blog/guides section where you can add content on a regular basis for the benefit of your visitors. This is something that search engines value greatly.

Creating an optimised, user-friendly website is the first step towards leading your business through the Google landscape.

2. Website Links

A link to your website on an external site is the equivalent of a recommendation in the eyes of Google; this means that the more links that you place on authoritative, quality websites that are both relevant to your site and that post regularly, the better your own site will appear to be.

This strategy is essential if you want your online business to survive Google’s updates and changes as a lot of organic traffic to your website is dependent upon where Google ranks you – and this depends partly on how many “recommendations” you have received from high quality websites.

In the past, websites were able to accrue backlinks from all sorts of websites with little attention to quality or relevance but Google has put a stop to this and even punished some with penalties.

3. Social Media

Another method of leading your company into a brighter future is through the use of social media; Google includes social media as another tool by which they can judge your reputation and your authority.

It’s essential that you build a following, post unique content frequently and interact with your audience on the various social channels.

The best social channels for you to utilise include Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn; when using the first three of these social channels we recommend that you attempt to communicate with both your audience and relevant authoritative figures.

It’s also important to keep an eye on your social metrics – the aim is to acquire more followers, likes or be in more social circles than vice versa. Not only will this look good to the individuals that may be interested in what you’re sharing, but it’ll also increase the likelihood of Google noticing an increase in your reputation.

By following these simple steps you can stop fearing changes from Google and start taking advantage of organic traffic for your online business.