Search engine optimization, or SEO, has a rather large learning curve that goes with it.  This is partly due to the technical terms and locations you must go to make necessary changes, and also due to the fact that the standards are constantly changing!  Look closely, however, and you’ll find when it comes to ranking higher in search engines like Google, quality makes all the difference.

Why would you want to be on the first page of Google? – Well, it’s proven that people who rank in the first page get the most traffic, the most clicks, and the most conversions.  Many times, people searching the web want something very fast, and if they don’t get it they will probably just refine their search instead of looking through dozens of pages for the one query.  If you’re not showing up on the first page and the content in the snippet is not providing the searcher what they are looking for or at least sending them in the right direction, you’re simply not going to get your message, service, or product in front of those searchers.

The good news is that ranking high is search results is doable.  By taking a proactive approach and following these simple steps, you’ll find that you can help your business place higher in a top SERP position.  If you want to take it even farther, you can hire a professional search engine optimization company to design a campaign to help you get found on Google and other engines, but leaving it to chance is equivalent to walking away from money and essentially setting your business up for failure.

Here are some simple tips you can use that you can do to increase your ranking, and most of them you can even do yourself!

1: Frequently Update Your Website with Relevant Content

Regular content uploads on Blogs or ensuring your content is up to date is a major factor in ranking higher.  You don’t want to have a blog that you only update once a year. Even if you don’t have a blog, another example would be dates on the main page for something like events.  Having an events page or section showing events that already occurred without including new, updated event(s) and dates does not help you in search rankings.

Notice how we also put the word “relevant” above?  This is also very important.  Your content must be valuable to people who come to your site.  Let’s take a service business, for example, like an electrical company.  It doesn’t make sense for them to share a post or upload content for a pet food giveaway or company.  Sometimes, especially small businesses, are guilty of trying to help out their spouses business or another local small business.  It’s nice and all, but it’s not good at all in the long run.  People who come to your site are looking specifically for your service, product, or information, and if they go to your site or social media just to be confused, they will just leave.  Google and other search engines can tell when your content isn’t matching  your business type.

I’m sure this is something you would be doing regularly anyway – but even so, it’s an absolute must! Regularly updated content is viewed as one of the best indicators of a site’s relevancy. Make sure to keep it fresh.

2: Improve Keyword Relevancy

The placement of keywords throughout your site is perhaps one of the most important SEO tactics. It’s useful to take into account how someone would search for information on the specific service or product you are offering, as the keywords they use are likely to be the keywords you want to be using. BUT make sure you don’t add ridiculous amounts of keywords, especially if they are unrelated as this can lead to your site being flagged as spam. Search engine spiders are programmed to ignore ‘keyword-stuffing’.

3: Organize, Categorize, and Promote Important Pages

Structure your site in a logical way. Define and highlight your most significant pages by identifying the pages that generate the largest amount of traffic and profits and promote those pages more.  You basically want to envision your website as a funnel, and you want to guide your visitor to the exact pages you want them to view.  Every page should have a very specific goal and should have the right titles, alt tags, and other basic page meta information.

4: Make sure your website is Mobile Friendly!

This is HUGE!  With nearly 40% of organic traffic coming from mobile devices in 2015’, its hardly surprising that websites with a mobile friendly interface will rank higher in Google searches. Ultimately Google is trying to provide the best user experience – so really the better the user experience on your site, the better you will rank with Google.  Google is already punishing people’s rankings who do not have either a mobile site, or a responsive site that scales for phones so everything can be easily viewed without the viewer having to pinch the screen to zoom in and out to get what they need out of a page.

 

That should at least get you on the right track and give you something to focus on for now, but there’s a ton of other things that all play into ranking well; that’s why there are SEO firms who only offer SEO as service!  If you’re interested in learning some other techniques, you can look into creating XML sitemaps, doing keyword research for relevant page titles and ALT tags.

The last thing I can tell you is it’s important to monitor your progress.  You won’t know if all your hard SEO work is paying off unless you keep track of your search standings. Keep an eye on your page ranking by buying software or hiring SEO experts!

If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact us!

Until next time,

Posted in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Web Design