When will I get to #1 on Google?
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been asked this question!
The short answer is that there is no short answer! It doesn’t happen by magic and you do need to be prepared to invest some time (and patience) in improving your search rankings. For most people, search = Google, but don’t forget there are other search engines – Bing and Yahoo are just two of many.
There’s some great sites out there with a sea of information, and there are some (mostly) common sense things you can do consistently to improve your rankings. Sometimes though, it’s hard to know if what you’re looking at is good, bad or indifferent, so I’ve got some tips for you, most of which are to do with how well constructed your website is, how you connect with your customers, and how often you update.
When I first put this website out there, it took a couple of weeks for Google to find me, and was way down past page 5, probably closer to page 10 – way past any point that most people would keep looking. Yikes! With some consistent effort, monitoring and fine tuning, I’ve made it up to page one for some specific search terms. I’m now widening those terms to get to a wider audience (and much bigger fishpond!). Adding the blog back into the site is part of the plan! But, it did take around 8-10 weeks before I started to see any real result.
Because I get asked so often about website search engine optimisation (SEO), I thought I’d share some of the information I share with clients when I’m developing their websites. And I stress here that thinking about how you want to be found and viewed needs to be part of the process from planning to implementation, and you need to include search optimisation in site maintenance activities.
But first, if you want to find out how Google works, take a look at google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/thestory which is kinda cool and explains it much better than I ever could!
Here’s 10 ways you can improve your Google ranking, and make your website better (or should that be the other way around?!)…
- Focus on your customers … after all, that is the ultimate goal of your website – to attract customers. What are they searching for? There is no value in describing something as ‘product x’ if everyone is searching for ‘product y’ or putting information on your website if no-one is looking for it. If you’re not sure, ask your potential customers!
- Structure your site well and by that I mean have a plan and stick to it – don’t just randomly add content unless it fits with the overall map of how you want to grow your site! Use the same (key)words in your headings, first paragraph of content, and be consistent! If you use WordPress, there’s some great plugins that can help you fine tune your pages. A favourite of mine is WordPress SEO by Yoast and I routinely install it on virtually every site I create.
- Write great content (and don’t duplicate it). You’ve probably heard that a gazillion times before, but it’s true! Google likes well constructed, fresh content. Good headings, sub headings, properly formatted pages with content that is relevant and fresh. And, you shouldn’t forget good grammar and your punctuation either! In that content, make sure you ahve ‘alt’ tags for all of your images, and good ‘titles’ on your links.
- Get social. Choose the social media networks that you want to focus on, and use them! Don’t think you have to do all of them at once, but keep in mind that Google is taking social ‘likes’ into account – you know those ‘social share’ buttons on your site? They’re not just there to be pretty!! Use Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter,TripIt, Yelp – whichever ones work for your business, to start a conversation with your customers and encourage them to click on those buttons!
- Don’t let your website languish. Update regularly! Even if you’re not adding new products or services frequently, you should be doing some work regularly. Fix any broken links, add some testimonials, update images, add some resources or additional content about your products/services. Your website isn’t set and forget – you should be making it work for you!
- Set up a Google+ profile, and claim your Google Places page. Both of these can be challenging – I’ve had to do my Google Places page twice now (it changed a while back) – incredibly frustrating, but worth the effort. You will need to have a gmail account for both of these.
- Have some good quality links in and out of your site. Link to your profile at relevant professional associations, the local chamber of commerce, client websites, directory sites, community or interest groups – what these links are will depend on your industry and business. In return ask your suppliers, clients, customers, to add a link from their site to yours.
- If it’s appropriate, do some guest posts on relevant industry blogs, or comment on posts in forums, social channels, and blogs. This will usually give you the opportunity to add your website link to your comment but make sure it is relevant for your business!
- Think carefully about using adwords (paid keyword advertising). It can be expensive, and whilst you do have the bonus of seeing your website at the top of the heap, personally, I think it comes at the cost of making it harder to increase your organic rankings. I’m not suggesting it shouldn’t be part of the mix, but do be sure about why you’re doing it, and are the $$ worth it.
- Don’t overthink it. A well constructed site that is good for your business may not have to be top of the heap for you to attract traffic, encourage enquiries, which you can then convert into sales!
This is really only the tip of the iceberg and I could’ve written so much more!
There are probably thousands of sites you could find all talking about how to optimise your site. A few I have found useful and interesting are quicksprout.com/blog, mashable.com (for so much more than this topic!), socialmediaexaminer.com, hubspot.com/blog, searchengineland.com and searchenginejournal.com.
Google Webmasters is of course, another great source of information and Webmaster Education is a great place to start. As a quick aside, when was doing some research for this post, just to make sure what was in my head and what I say to clients, really is good information, I found it very curious that no Google-owned pages actually came up in the first 2 or 3 pages of the search results if i searched for “how to improve your Google search ranking”!
Seriously though,
- don’t get hung up on following every piece of advice you’re given – it can be overwhelming;
- don’t over think it – if you construct your website with only SEO in mind, it will show – you still need your business shine and to have some personality online;
- if in doubt, get professional help to fine tune and review how your website is working! It’s an investment in your business.
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PS and don’t fall for those emails telling you your site is awful and you should email a secret email address for free help on getting that #1 ranking. I get those emails all the time … apparently my site is technically poor, not ranking at all, and just not up to scratch! Hmm, what can I say … don’t go there, they’re spam!
