It is difficult these days to climb the success ladder without a website. Businesses now understand the importance of having a robust online presence. But a website alone cannot guarantee you success. To do well on the internet circuit, you need to make sure that you rank high on the search engines. Talking of search engines, one search engine that you cannot ignore is Google. Google is the leader in the search market.
According to Search Engine Watch, Google has 72.48% of the world’s search market, which makes it the undisputed king in the search market. Whether it is a paid campaign or organic reach, you cannot do well as a marketer if you ignore Google.
If your website is not ranking high on Google search results, then you are missing big time on opportunities. Studies show that the first page of Google gets most of the web traffic, and the subsequent pages get very little traffic. It is, therefore, important for businesses to try and reach the first page of Google so that they can do well on the online arena.
So, what is it that you need to do to improve your website visibility on Google search results?
Google algorithms keep changing at regular intervals. Hence, if you want your website to rank on the first page of the Google search results, you need to be creative, persistent, and you should know how to utilise the resources smartly.
Here is what you should do to improve your website visibility on Google search results.
How to improve your website visibility on Google search results?
Though it might seem difficult initially to climb the search engine ranking and reach the top, if you work diligently, you can realise your goal sooner rather than later. Here is what you should do if you want to improve your website visibility on Google search results:
Try to understand the Google ranking algorithm – As mentioned earlier, the Google algorithm keeps changing at regular intervals. According to Moz, there are around 500 – 600 changes every year. You do get to know some of the major changes which Google makes in its algorithms, but the exact working is still in the realm of speculation by the industry professionals. Some of the major Google updates that it has announced in the recent past are the mobile-friendly update, Pigeon, Hummingbird, and Penguin.
You can check out Moz’s Google Algorithm Change History which organises updates in chronological order. Google Webmaster Central and The Webmaster are the other two places you should check out for the updates.
Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly – Estimates suggest that 60% of searches take place on mobile devices, and it is a growing trend. It is not surprising then that in the US more searches take place on mobile devices than on desktops. Though some of Google’s algorithms remain in the realm of speculation, Google is pretty clear about its mobile policy. If your site is not mobile-friendly, it cannot rank high in the Google search results.
You can check your site’s mobile-friendly status on Google’s Mobile-Friendly checker. In case your site is not mobile-friendly, then make sure that you get a responsive web design ASAP so that you can rank higher on the Google search results.
There is also a connection between mobile and local SEO search results. Google is very systematic when it comes to mobile and local search because it wants to connect consumers to brands without any hassle. Hence, you need to ensure that your Google My Business profile is current and that it offers the complete information.
Check out your present search ranking – If you want to improve your search ranking, you need to know where you stand currently. There are a lot many resources and tools available on the internet to check this out.
You can use SERPs.com to find out your website’s keyword rank. If you are using specific keywords in your page content, you can use SERPs.com to find out your rank. You can type in your keyword along with your site URL. There are various other options available as well like viewing at Yahoo results, selecting the device type like mobile or desktop, and checking out on local rankings by putting in your zip or city code.
You will get the following things on the results page – your site ranking for that particular term on search engines, your first website page that throws up in search results for that particular keyword, your average searches on a monthly basis, and the average cost per click for the keyword.
Find out your site speed as this is a major ranking factor for Google. You should not expect a high search position if your site speed is slow. Slow site speed also adversely affects your conversions and sales. Google is harsh on sites that have slow load speeds. You can run your site speed test to find the load speed of your website. Again, there are a lot of resources available on the internet that can help you out in checking the load speed of your website. You can check it out on Google PageSpeed Insights, WebPageTest, or Rigor.
You need to make sure that the load speed of your website is less than two seconds and for mobile devices, it should be less than one second.
You also need to find the health of your site. Do you think there is a sudden drop in your organic traffic? Or, is the thought troubling you that Google might have banned your site? Again, the internet offers you the resources that can check out details on five major categories – general site problems, mail server, blacklist, DNS, and web server. You can try MxToolBox Domain Health Report to check out the details. Click the boxes for each category to find out the errors in your website. If there are errors and problems, you can resolve it one by one.
You can also find out if you have been penalised by one of the major algorithm updates. You can try FE International’s Website Penalty Indicator tool.
One of the other factors that affect the site health is the domain age. In a study by SerpIQ, it was concluded that domain age does contribute to site ranking. What you need is a bit of patience because your search engine ranking should increase as your domain ages.
Keep a tab on all the right metrics – Keeping a tab on all the right metrics is yet another factor that affects your ranking. It gives you an idea what you need to improve on. Some of the vital metrics to check are:
Check out the organic traffic. You need to know the number of visitors that come to your site via Google. Organic search is the highest source of revenue for most of the verticals barring the media and the entertainment industry. In these verticals (media and entertainment), email, display, and referrals have a slight edge. You can go to your Google Analytics account to find out (check the acquisition channels report) the number of visitors coming to your site via Google.
Also, check out organic traffic conversions. It is important to keep a tab on the keywords that generate maximum traffic for your website. You can use SERP Scan to find out the keywords that convert organically for your website. When you do a SERP Scan, you get a 12-month report of the keywords that have generated organic traffic for your site.
Keep a tab on keyword ranking for commercial keywords. It is vital here to note the difference between informational keywords and commercial keywords. Informational keywords can generate organic traffic for your site, but it is difficult to convert them into buyers. Hence, the need to pay attention to commercial keywords. Generally, visitors for informational keywords are not in the mode to buy. For example, “home remedies to clear acne” is an informational keyword and “best acne products” is a commercial keyword. The bottom line is that commercial keywords are more likely to convert.
You can set up an SEO dashboard in Google Analytics so that you can keep track of all these vital metrics.
Work on your backlinks, and find out your present penalties and fix it – You should not expect your site to rank higher if it is not healthy. Link building has changed over time. Bad links will hurt your site irrespective of on-page SEO which also results in a penalty. It is therefore vital that you generate your links in the right manner. Links should not just appear to be natural; they need to be natural. What you need to do is identify unhealthy links and get rid of them.
The first thing you need to do is analyse your inbound links. Again, you have a lot many tools that will help you analyse the links. For example, you can use SEOprofiler or Majestic to analyse the links. The result will throw up some interesting facts about your backlinks:
- Unique active backlinks – The result will tell you the number of links that affect your Google ranking directly or indirectly.
- Nofollow links – You need a combination of dofollow links and nofollow links. Dofollow links are those that pass ranking value and nofollow links are that don’t pass ranking value.
- Industry – The analysis gives an insight into which industry you belong to, and it helps you identify the relevant links that improve your backlink profile.
- Link influence score – You can get to know how your links are influencing your search engine ranking.
- Anchor text – It is the text that turns into your link and points to your page. It is recommended that you diversify your anchor text.
You also need to identify and get rid of the harmful or unnatural links. You can use Monitor Backlinks or Linkquidator to identify the links. You can get rid of the harmful links in two ways. You can get in touch with the site owner from where the link is coming from and request them to manually remove the link or ask them to add a nofollow tag. Or, you can use Google’s Disavow tool to remove the unhealthy and unnatural links successfully. But, doing this authorises Google to stop passing on the value from these links to your page.
Improve your on-page SEO with keyword research – Keyword research is an integral part of an inbound marketing strategy. Find out the keywords your audience uses to reach your site. Use your Google account and visit Google Keyword Planner. Next, you need to click “search for new keyword and ad group ideas” on the dashboard. Now, put in your main keyword and click on the “keywords” tab. A table gets displayed that will show your keywords and the search volume that it generates over a month.
Keyword research helps you to understand your target audience in a better way. You get to know what they (your target audience) want and how you need to present it to them. It is always helpful if you know your target audience well. And, when you give them the content that is relevant to them, it helps you climb your ranking. You can use Alexa to assess your audience demographics. With the help of keyword research, you can easily find out the intent of your buyers which helps you address conversion issues.
If you want to improve your Google rankings, you should always use a mix of informational and commercial keywords in your page content. You can use commercial keywords to target your buyers and use informational keywords to build a strong rapport with your audience who are yet to become your buyers.
Another thing which you should not ignore while researching keywords is long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords not just increase your traffic, but it also improves your Google rankings.
Also, if your competitors are ahead of you on the Google search results, then you need to check out the reason. And, it will not harm you in any way to copy their strategies and surge ahead on the Google rankings. You can use Google Keyword Planner because it gives you on the spot estimate of competitors’ keyword targets.
You can use keyword analysis to improve your content. The basis of keyword analysis is to know which are the right keywords to target. Keyword analysis is the starting point of the search marketing campaigns. When you know what qualified visitors type in to search your website, you can customise your landing pages to increase your conversions.
Work on on-page SEO to improve your Google ranking – You should do some meaningful on-page SEO changes to climb the search engine rankings. What you need to do is optimise your title tags. You need to ensure that all your title tags are unique, descriptive, and it should cater to your targeted keywords. Try not to repeat the keywords and title tags over and over again. When it comes to title tags, avoid using all caps and use pipes and dashes between terms to maximise its effect. Also, you should not overuse your keywords. Title tags that are relevant, contextual, and natural are valued more by Google. It is not recommended to use default title tags like “Home” or “Product Page” as these are viewed suspiciously by Google, and it is also not too convincing from your user’s perspective.
Though meta descriptions do not have any significant impact on your Google ranking, still they help in determining your search snippet and adds uniqueness which in turn can influence your click-through rate.
You should also use structured data markup or schema markup. It (schema markup) helps Google to understand your website in a better way, and it also drives additional traffic to your site. You can use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to implement schema markup on your website.
You can also build a search engine sitemap. It helps Google to know about the organisation of the content of your website.
Create good content by using your keywords – It has long been known that your content should be of high-quality, useful, and valuable to your visitors, and it ought to target a particular set of people. You should write resourceful, descriptive, and detailed content to improve your search engine rankings on Google by optimising informational keywords add descriptive meta description and title tags. With this process, you can attract many fans who share your content on the social media platforms which ensures that you get relevant and authoritative links. So, how can you write resourceful and detailed content? Here is how you should do it:
- Back up your articles with accurate data to increase your traffic and improve your search engine rankings.
- Storytelling is another way of captivating your audience which also increases your conversion rates.
- You can also start your content with something that has a unique flavour which resonates well with your target audience.
- You also need to share your experience, be it good or bad.
- You also need to ensure that you add a call to action or CTA at the end of your content.
- Also, make sure that your headline is catchy, attractive, and sharable. Shareable headlines are not only shared, but they are more likely to be clicked.
- You should also try to add a number to your headline.
- You can also invoke curiosity, create a multimedia experience for your readers, and get rid of duplicate content to increase your ranking on Google.
- Always ensure that you build the links in the right way – You should focus on building your links in the right manner. You should use anchor text linking, which are links in between your text.
- You should also use image links in your content.
- Also, you can use editorial links in your content.
- You also need to concentrate on scale link building. You can use link diversity to generate Google-friendly links and improve your rankings.
If you want to do well in the game of search results, you need to make sure that you work on all these factors. However, if you think you need help at any stage, you should get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now. Our dedicated team of experts knows how to take your website up the search engine ladder.
vStacks Software Solutions has been working with clients in almost all the verticals, and we have delivered what we had promised, and we can surely do the same for your website.