15 Feb How to Increase Your Website’s Visibility in Google Search Results

Simply having a website is not enough for your business or brand to be successful online. If your website doesn’t appear as one of the top search engine results, your site’s visibility and accessibility will remain low. The order in which your website appears on a search page can drastically affect your reach and user engagement. This is truer now than ever with Google, the world’s leading search engine.

 

Google holds 72.48% of the entire share of search in the world. Infront Webworks found that the first search page on Google receives 95% of the web traffic for any given search.  Any pages after that only see 5% or less of the total traffic. Achieving first-page status is essential for a website to succeed.

 

So, just how can you improve the visibility of your website in Google’s search results? Let’s look at your best options.

 

Understand the Google Ranking Algorithm

The Google algorithm is constantly changing–about 500-600 times a year, to be exact. Google may announce a number of the major changes, but knowing every single small adjustment of the algorithm is more on the level of tech industry professionals. Some of the most notable updates from Google include Pigeon, Hummingbird, and Penguin.

Moz’s Google Algorithm Change History organizes all significant updates in chronological order, coupled with a brief summary of the update and links to more detailed explanations. Additionally, Google Webmaster Central and The Webmaster keep webmasters on top of the latest Google updates.

Being aware of major changes to Google’s search algorithm can help you make adjustments to your website accordingly in order to stay as high up on the search list as possible.

 

Make Sure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly

Studies have found that approximately 60% of searches take place on mobile devices, which is expected to steadily increase over time. Because the majority of searches are conducted via mobile devices, Google’s algorithm gives top search result priority to websites that are mobile-friendly. This means that it’s nearly impossible to get on the front page, let alone the second if your website is not easily accessible on mobile.

Google’s Mobile-Friendly checker is one easy way to find out if your site works on mobile. If you discover that your website is not mobile-friendly, you will need a new, responsive web design as soon as possible to keep your search result spot or even move it up.

Mobile and local SEO search results are also very important since Google’s mission is to facilitate the instant connection between consumers and brands. So, in addition to your website being up to date, make sure to often check that your Google My Business profile is correct and provides any information consumers will need when searching for your business while on mobile.

 

Check Your Current Search Ranking

SERPs.com can be used to find out your website’s keyword rank if you are using specific keywords in your page content. Simply type in your keywords, and add your site URL. It is also possible to choose a type of device like mobile or desktop, to see local rankings in your city, and to view Yahoo results in addition to Google. In your results with SERPs, you will receive your site ranking for the selected keywords, the first web page that appears in the search results for that particular keyword, your average searches on a monthly basis, and the average cost per click for the keyword.

The speed of a website is another major ranking factor for Google. Slow site speed also adversely affects your conversions and sales. Google’s algorithm gives preference to websites with quick load times. To test the speed of your website, you can turn to Google PageSpeed Insights, WebPageTest, or Rigor. Website load speed should be under two seconds for desktop and under one second for mobile.

The virtual health of your website is also important. A vast number of problems with your website itself can cause low search rankings, including general site problems, mail server issues, blacklisting, DNS complications, and web server errors. MxToolBox’s Domain Health Report can help you learn your website’s health and potential issues. Check off the box in each category to view the errors in your website so you can resolve them.

To see if you have been penalized by one of the major algorithm updates, FE International’s Website Penalty Indicator tool can help.

Lastly, SerpIQ’s study confirmed that domain age affects site ranking. Your website’s search engine ranking should increase over time as the domain gets older, so all that’s left to do is simply wait when it comes to this factor.

 

Keep an Eye on the Right Metrics

Keeping an eye on all the right metrics helps you get an idea of what needs to be done to improve your site ranking. Some of the vital metrics to check are organic traffic, organic traffic conversions and ranking for commercial keywords.

Organic traffic is the number of visitors your site receives from Google search. If you have a Google Analytics account, you can see and track how many visitors come to your site via Google in the Acquisitions report.

Organic traffic conversions are equally as important for increasing site traffic and can be found by tracking the keywords that generate maximum traffic for your website. SERP Scan is a useful tool to discover the keywords that convert organically for your website, and it will provide you with a 12-month report of all the keywords that have helped your site generate organic traffic.

It can be tricky to convert organic traffic users to buyers based only on informational keywords. This is where commercial keywords come into play. On average, users generated with informational keywords are not looking to make a purchase right away. For example, “natural hair treatment types” is an informational keyword and “organic hair products” is a commercial keyword. Essentially, commercial keywords are more likely to bring in conversions.

 

Once again, if you have a Google Analytics account, you can set up an SEO dashboard to easily track these vital metrics.

 

Check Backlinks and Discover Current Penalties

 

Link building on a page, while useful, can also hurt your site ranking and cause a penalty. Internal and external links should be high-quality and legitimate. Here are the steps to identify “black hat” (links intended to artificially manipulate a site’s ranking) and outdated links and remove them:

1.   Analyze your internal links. Tools such as SEOprofiler or Majestic can analyze the links using the following elements:

• Unique active backlinks – This shows how many links affect your Google ranking directly or indirectly.
• Industry – Provides an insight into which industry your website belongs to, and it helps identify the relevant links that improve your backlink profile.
• Link influence score – See how your links impact your search engine ranking.
• Anchor text – The text that becomes your link and points to your page. It is recommended that you diversify your anchor text.

2.   Identify any harmful or black hat links on your site. Monitor Backlinks or Linkquidator can identify the links.
   
3.   Remove harmful links in two ways. First, you can contact the original site owner of the link and request them to manually remove them, or add a nofollow tag. Alternatively, you can use Google’s Disavow tool to remove the low-quality links from your site. However, this authorizes Google to stop passing on the value from these links to your page.

 

Improve On-Page SEO with Keyword Research

Keyword research helps you better understand your target audience, their needs and the best way to market to them. Improve your site ranking by providing targeted, relevant content. Alexa can be used to assess audience demographics. Through keyword research, it is easy to understand buyer intent and improve content, which can improve conversion rates.

Use a mix of informational and commercial keywords to increase your site’s Google search ranking. Commercial keywords can target buyers, and informational keywords can develop rapport with potential buyers from your audience. In addition, long-tail keywords are known to increase site traffic and improve search ranking.

Keyword research is an integral part of an inbound marketing strategy. To learn the keywords your audience uses to reach your site, you can use your Google account and visit Google Keyword Planner. Click “search for new keyword and ad group ideas” on the dashboard. Then, enter your main keyword and click on the “keywords” tab. A table will show your keywords and the search volume they generate for a given month.

Don’t be afraid to check out the competitors that may be above you in Google search results. See what strategies they are using to stay ahead, and consider what you can implement into your own strategies for your site. Google Keyword Planner can also be used to provide an estimate of competitors’ keyword targets.  

Implement On-Page SEO

First, optimize your title tags. All of your title tags should be unique, descriptive, and align with your target keywords. Try not to repeat the keywords and title tags. Avoid using all caps and use dashes between terms to maximize keyword relevance.

However, be careful not to overuse keywords. Google values relevant and natural title tags. Steer clear of default title tags like “Home” or “Product Page” as these are viewed suspiciously by Google. While meta descriptions do not significantly affect your Google ranking, they still help to determine your site’s search description and add individuality, which also improve your click-through rate.

Also, use structured data markup or schema markup. Schema markup helps Google understand your site better and drives additional site traffic. Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper can help implement schema markup on your website. You can also build a search engine sitemap, which helps the algorithm evaluate the organization of the content of your website.

 

Develop Quality Content with Keywords

Write resourceful and detailed content to improve your search engine rankings on Google by optimizing for informational keywords and adding descriptive meta descriptions and title tags.

Here are some tips for writing high-quality, relevant content:

• Support your work with references and links to accurate data to increase your traffic and improve your search engine rankings.
• Implement storytelling to engage your audience and improve conversion rates.
• Target your audience with something unique about your brand or product.
• Share both good and bad experiences, and allow consumers to do the same.
• Always have a call to action, or CTA, at the end of your content for users to engage.
• Write catchy, attractive, and shareable headlines that are likely to be clicked.
• Consider adding a relevant number to your headline, where applicable.
• Implement multimedia elements, where possible and appropriate.
• Eliminate duplicate content from your site.

 

Build Links Properly

Use anchor text linking, which are links in between your text. Image links and editorial links are also great ways to boost your content quality. Diversify your link types and sources to generate Google-friendly links and improve your rankings.

Virtual Stacks Systems UK provides expert skill and experiences combined with the right resources to take the time and effort off your hands while still improving your website’s search ranking results on Google. Read more about our SEO Services, and contact us today for a plan that’s right for you and your business!