Many businesses receive the bulk of their customers from search engines such as Google. Having high rankings can help you to gain more leads – few people look beyond the first page of Google and even fewer venture beyond the second page. But just how do you improve your rankings?
Much like paying for an ad in a phonebook, you can pay to display your search listing as a Google ad for a guaranteed place at the top for a limited time. However, not everyone will click on these ads – some people still prefer to scroll down and choose the sites that have the best organic results.
There is no quick fix for getting to the top of Google organically, however there is an effective strategy known as SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) that you can try. Here are just a few of the best tried and tested SEO tactics for improving your rankings.
Post new content regularly
Search engines like Google give priority to sites that are constantly active. If a website hasn’t been edited for years, it could suggest that it’s no longer in use and Google may reduce its rankings. Constantly adding new content will keep your site looking active.
Extra content can also be a way of attracting new customers. New pages and products will open up new pathways to your site.
A blog is one of the most common ways to constantly keep a site updated. By publishing new blog posts each week, you can keep generating fresh content without having to offer new products or promotions. A blog should be made up of informational and educational posts related to your niche.
For instance, if you are a software company, a good SaaS SEO strategy would be to publish regular content answering frequently asked questions like whether software developers can work remotely or how much remote software developers earn. You can also crowdsource information by using discussion-based forums and sites like Quora and Reddit to search for questions and topics or ask your own.
This way, you can learn more about what your target audience is interested in and compile fresh insights that can help you craft new content. Finally, keep up with trends by reading popular industry publications and setting up alerts for relevant news stories that can inspire fresh content ideas.
Use the right keywords
Keywords are still a big part of SEO. By using keywords strategically on your site, you can persuade Google to rank you higher when searchers look up these terms.
Using the right keywords involves doing keyword research. A lot of people make the mistakes of focusing on ‘vanity’ keywords – these tend to be short and popularly searched keywords like ‘London restaurants’ or ‘used cars’ that are difficult to rank highly with because of how many people are using them. In most cases, it’s better to forget the vanity keywords and go after long tail keywords. Such keywords (e.g. ‘Clapham restaurant suitable for vegans’ or ‘where to find used Mazda CX 3’) may be more specific but will have a lot less competition, making you more likely to rank higher.
Use external and internal links
Hyperlinks can help to improve your search rankings too. Internal links (links from your site to other pages on your site) can give Google a good idea of your site’s structure and tends to improve search rankings for these pages. External links meanwhile can be just as important – Google likes sites that aren’t totally self-centred and that help to boost traffic for others. If you haven’t been using any links, try to include more within your site.
Focus on producing readable content
In the early days of Google, it was common practice for sites to rely on ‘keyword stuffing’ (which basically involves stuffing as many keywords into a text as possible to improve rankings). This can be distracting and can make your content unreadable. Google also now penalises any content that it thinks is too obviously SEO-focused – you could even find that your rankings get worse. Try to write naturally and don’t try to force the use of keywords into content that isn’t relevant.
Other factors involving readability are also important. Content that is unique and interesting is more likely to rank higher – if you’re creating a generic copy of another post you’ve seen online, it likely won’t rank highly. Formatting choices such as frequent paragraph breaks and bullet points can also improve rankings and may even help you to get snippets featured on Google. Using images will also improve your rankings.
Build your backlinks
Backlinks are one of the most vital ingredients to good SEO. They are hyperlinks found on other sites leading directly to your site. The more links there are leading to your site, the more noteworthy your site will look to Google.
Building backlinks isn’t easy. Promoting your site’s content on social media can help other people to share it, which may in turn encourage other sites to link to it. You can also ask third party blogs to link to your content (consider paying bloggers to write such content if you think it’s necessary). You can also cross-promote with other companies.
Improve your page loading speed
The speed at which your site loads can also affect your search engine rankings. Slow-loading sites tend to get poor rankings. Consequently, it’s worth sorting out any page load speed issues.
There are lots of different factors that can affect the speed of a site. If you’re using lots of high resolution images, you could find that this slows down your site – optimising these images could be necessary. Using lots of plug-ins and lots of embedded media per page (such as multiple embedded YouTube videos) could also be slowing down your site. You may also want to consider migrating to a new hosting server – cheap web hosting servers can sometimes be slower.
Make use of analytics
Google Analytics is a must-have tool that will show you exactly where your traffic is coming from, including which keywords people are using on Google and which content is most popular. This can help you to spot trends such as which keywords are popular and which content is click-worthy, so that you can cater your website towards these trends.
There are also other analytic tools that you can use to find out which keywords competitors are using, as well as helping you to find out general information on keyword popularity.
