“Just google it.” The phrase that seems to have become the answer to… well… everything. Like the brand name hoover, the Oxford dictionary already features the verb ‘to google’.

With control of 81.67% of the search engine market, how consumers and businesses find your brand online is most likely to be through Google.

Your company website now needs to be the best digital asset for your brand. The best way to do this? Ensuring your brand continues to be seen in search results pages and that your website is optimised for Google. This is where your PR strategy plays a vital role.

Many companies may feel that they have only just fully come to grips with the notions of keywords and on-site SEO but Google is developing and changing. How companies approach their SEO needs to as well.

The full amalgamation of Google Panda into Google’s main ranking algorithm has already made Google a lot smarter. Now AI is here and Google is making sure that it is the first to jump on board. The more Google acts like a human, the more important your online presence – and PR - will become. Gone are the days when Google was easily fooled by cheap ploys and clickbait, PRs offering mass volumes of any old content.

However, there are still some fundamental aspects to Google optimisation that will not change. Google is (at least for now) still technically software and like all software there is a certain pattern to follow to ensure the best outcome and success.

So, how do you prepare your brand to not only survive the changes to Google but to actually utilise them?

We’re no psychics, but the signs are clear: Google wants speed, responsiveness and relevance. Quality is also far more important than quantity. A longer page dwell time and low bounce rate are vital – and so is your brand being mentioned on external sites with quality links.

Content is also key. Google now expects brands to have original, relevant content that is useful to the company’s web users.  Continuously refreshing your company’s online content, with the use of a company blog for example, also ensures that your website is not static and that it climbs up the Google search rankings.

These tips are just a little starter for 10 for your brand’s off-site Google optimisation. Keen to learn more? We have a solution which we hope should be far more informative than just doing a Google search.

Firefly hosted a webinar on the 7^th October covering what Google’s latest developments mean for brands. It looked at how UK companies in the technology sector fare against their US, French and German competitors in the search rankings – and what PR can do to ‘futureproof’ brands against Google’s inexorable progress.

To download the eBook, visit our resources page here.