How can I rank on Google?

With any business, it’s vital to get your company name out there. SEO plays a significant role in this, and you need to be thinking about this as soon as possible.

What is SEO? 

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the process of improving the quality and increasing the number of users visiting your website. SEO refers directly to organic traffic – anyone using search engines to find a website instead of direct traffic or paid traffic.

To determine your rank, search engines such as Google use bots to crawl your website’s content looking at the copy, the quality of code, the use of pictures, links and redirects.

How to rank on Google

Create a list of key terms/phrases

The first step is to determine which key terms, phrases or keywords you want to rank for. To do this, you’ll need to think about your offering and list all the phrases you think someone might search to find you, plus the ones you want them to find you with – remember not all keywords will be easy to rank for, so consider long-tail keywords too, i.e. instead of just ‘sofa’ think ‘black leather corner sofa’.

You’ll also want to see which keywords your competitors are ranking for, so have a look and see if they rank for any you’ve listed. You can also use an SEO tool such as SEMrush to get more keyword data and suggestions or speak to professional like Sleeping Giant Media. Finally, once you’ve created a solid list of keywords, you’ll want to consider how you can update/ create content to focus on these phrases – remember to write for your audience and not just stuff your copy with keywords; Google doesn’t like this!

Create great content

Armed with your keyword list, you can start refining your website content – we recommend introducing a blog at the earliest possible stage. Search engines like to see lots of useful, informative copy, and they also want to see websites updated regularly. Good content isn’t just about ranking in Google. You need to produce relevant blogs for your audience if you want to drive traffic to your site and enhance your ranking. Keep the reader in mind when you’re writing, and be sure to break things down in a way that they’ll understand.

The more quality content you create, the higher you’ll rank for your selected key terms, and this will help you enhance your brand reach, grow your traffic and (hopefully) deliver quality conversions. Content is a slow burner, though, so don’t expect instant results; patience is key.

Use links

Whenever you write a piece of content for your website or blog, you should always think about how you might link it. For example, if you’re producing a piece of content explaining how to do something, you might reference several blogs on your website that go into specific areas in more detail.

Another thing to note about links is that it’s always best to use relevant anchor text. For example, if you want the user to read another blog, don’t just use anchor text like ‘here.’ Instead, make sure the call-to-action incorporates a relevant keyword like ‘find out more about our WordPress development services.’

A strong backlink strategy can also be beneficial in getting your site to rank higher in search engines. If you see someone sharing a piece of content you think could link well to a blog you’ve produced, then reach out and ask them if they wouldn’t mind adding your link to their copy. You could even return the favour. We don’t recommend paying for backlinks as this is often picked up and penalised by Google.

Implement redirects

During a site migration or a website restructure, you might be looking to change the naming of your URL’s, which can have significant SEO benefits. First, however, you should consult an expert to ensure you won’t lose any valuable SEO value and ensure that correct redirects are in place; you don’t want to send lots of traffic to 404 error pages, as this can have a detrimental impact on both rankings and user experience.

Consider your images and ALT tags

An image speaks a thousand words, and a website without them is pretty dull. Try choosing inspiring images and using relevant ALT tags, as this can impact your website’s rank.

How can I check how my website is performing?

There are lots of tools on the market that can give you an SEO audit/health check. We recommend Chrome’s Sitechecker or SEOptimer, both of which will generate page and site reports for you to share with your marketing team or agency.

Another way to keep an eye on your website’s performance is with Google Analytics. First, however, you’ll need to be able to navigate the dashboard to check out how much traffic you’re getting and where it’s coming from. For this, we’d suggest Google’s free Analytics training for beginners.