One of the most important parts of any modern business’s marketing strategy is making effective use of search engines. As internet use becomes more centralized around just a few websites, including these search engines, they direct a larger and larger portion of online sales. To that end, if you’re not ranking on Google, you could be missing a significant amount of the traffic and sales that you could have. Here are some ideas on how to better use search engines, see your site rank, and enjoy the benefits.
Your Website Isn’t Being Indexed
In order to be able to show your website and its various pages through the search engine, Google engine uses bots that crawl over the site, indexing every page. If they’re not able to index the page, then your site won’t get featured on the search engine. Google’s Search Console allows you to see whether or not your site is being indexed, as well as what might be blocking it, such as your site’s robots.txt file or meta tags, which can be used to block indexing.
Poor Keyword Strategy
Keywords are one of the most important aspects of search optimization. Search engines are used by people who type in keywords based on what they are looking for, and sites that are able to match the keywords used in these searches, down to the specific language they choose, in their content and meta-data are going to have a much better chance of catching the users as a result. Keyword planning tools can help you get a good idea of not just which keywords are most popular in your niche, but which don’t have as many other sites competing to fr them, as well.
Your Content Game Is Weak
Content is king, as the saying goes. There is nowhere this applies more than when it comes to helping your site rank in search engines. You need to ensure that you are routinely updating your website with content that is informative and truly valuable, whether it’s designed to solve a problem, to offer tips, or to keep the reader up to date on a given topic. If you’re not a writer, then this could be one aspect of your marketing strategy that could require some professional help.
Photo by Ivan Samkov
Poor Website Speed
While it might not seem relevant to search engines, the truth is that sites like Google do pay attention to the load speed of your website. If it takes too long to load, then they are likely to deprioritize it, causing it to drop further down in the rankings. There are a variety of different ways to improve the page load speed of your site, such as optimizing your images so that they don’t have huge file sizes, enabling browser caching, and getting rid of any old or out-of-date widgets or plugins that take too long to load.
It’s Not Mobile-Friendly
Smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices are taking a growing share of modern online traffic. As a result, Google and other search engines use a mobile-frist indexing system, meaning that sites that are optimized to these mobile designs are likely to appear higher on their search results. Take the time to make sure that your site is friendly to all devices. It helps not only with your search marketing but in generally expanding your audience.
Poor Technical SEO
There are a whole host of technical elements beneath the hood of the website that can impact your search engine rankings. This includes things like broken links, missing alt text on pages, improper URL structure, and ineffective internal linking. Working with reliable local web design services ensures that not only does your website look good and work well, but it’s designed for marketing success on the net, including technical SEO. A lot of SEO service providers offer a technical SEO audit tool that can go through your site and show you all of the things that need to be changed.
Lacking Online Security
Nowadays, online users are becoming a lot more savvy about which websites are safe to use and which are not. In particular, they are becoming aware of the value of sites that feature a “HTTPS” in their URL, and a padlock symbol beside it. Google is also well aware of this particular market of online security. It priortizies secure websites, and as a result, ranks those without security certificates lower in tis search results. Find and install a reliable SSL certificate. Not only does it improve your search rankings, but it builds a sense of trust and security amongst your visitors, as well.
High Bounce Rate
Sometimes, there might not be a technical reason as to why, exactly, Google isn’t priortiizing your site. However, Google measures sites based on user experiences, as well. If there are users who arrive at your site, but leave quickly after, leading to a high bounce rate, then it indicates to Google that they didn’t find what they wanted by visiting yoursite. There are a host of ways to reduce the bounce rate on your website, such as improving readability and immediate engagement with your content, enhancning navigation, and adding calls-to-action that encourage visitors to keep clicking through your site and keep engaging with you content.
Photo by Antoni Shkraba
You Don’t Have Enough Backlinks
As mentioned, it’s important to make sure that the internal links throughout your website work well and are structured in a way that makes sense and provides context for each page. However, links to websites outside of your own are just as important as well. When you are able to get backlinks to your website, from other sites that are reputable and have a certain degree of authority, your website alos gets more authority as a result in Google’s eyes. Creating a backlink strategy, including PR campaigns and influencer outreach can help you build those links on other sites. It’s not only good for SEO, but for building the brand of your site and business at the same time.
A Lack of Content Structure
It’s not just the contents of your content (aka, the subject, writing, and information) that matters, but the style of your content, as well. To that end, you should ensure that your content is structured effectively in a way that improves not just how well search engines can read it, but how well your visitors can read it as well. This includes using things such as H1, H2, and H3 tags, as well as paragraph breaks, subheaders, and bullet points to make sure that it’s easy for readers to look over and parse, and to find the specific information that they want to read.
Poor Local SEO Optimization
How effective your SEO efforts are depend, at least in part, on what exactly you are trying to achieve with them. The tips above may be enough if, for instance, you are simply trying to increase your reach across the internet and to bring in more traffic, more clicks and, hopefully, more conversions. However, if you’re looking to appeal to a specific market, especially a local market, then you should be taking on a local SEO strategy, as well. This includes things like including local and region/city/town-specific keywords in your content, setting up a Google business profile, and more.
A Lack of User Experience
If your users are having a tough time navigating your website, then they are a lot more likely to leave, which is going to contribute to the high bounce rate that, as mentioned above, can see your site falling down the search engine rankings. Take the time to test your website, having new users approach it and see if they can use the existing layout to find specific content. If the layout proves too confusing or outdated and they’re not able to find the content they’re looking for, then it’s time to change it up. Create a user-friendly website with clear navigation and intuitive design, preferable with the help of a web designer, using readable fonts and structured layouts.
It’s Out of Date
Whether it’s the navigation and look of the website, or the content itself, if you haven’t been updating your website, it’s going to get stagnant. Google can often tell how often a site is updated as well as when it was last updated and is likely to depriortize sites that haven’t changed in a while. What’s more, old content is naturally going to rank lower as new content comes in with more informative and up-to-date information, as well as content that is better suited to the keywords that search engine users are currently using. Maintain a content and website update calender to make sure that you don’t fall too far behind the curve.
With the tips above, you can make sure that your site is doing everything it can to get the benefits of ranking high on Google. Search engine marketing shouldn’t be the only arm of your online marketing strategy, but it should be an important one.
One of the most important parts of any modern business’s marketing strategy is making effective use of search engines. As internet use becomes more centralized around just a few websites, including these search engines, they direct a larger and larger portion of online sales. To that end, if you’re not ranking on Google, you could be missing a significant amount of the traffic and sales that you could have. Here are some ideas on how to better use search engines, see your site rank, and enjoy the benefits.
Your Website Isn’t Being Indexed
In order to be able to show your website and its various pages through the search engine, Google engine uses bots that crawl over the site, indexing every page. If they’re not able to index the page, then your site won’t get featured on the search engine. Google’s Search Console allows you to see whether or not your site is being indexed, as well as what might be blocking it, such as your site’s robots.txt file or meta tags, which can be used to block indexing.
Poor Keyword Strategy
Keywords are one of the most important aspects of search optimization. Search engines are used by people who type in keywords based on what they are looking for, and sites that are able to match the keywords used in these searches, down to the specific language they choose, in their content and meta-data are going to have a much better chance of catching the users as a result. Keyword planning tools can help you get a good idea of not just which keywords are most popular in your niche, but which don’t have as many other sites competing to fr them, as well.
Your Content Game Is Weak
Content is king, as the saying goes. There is nowhere this applies more than when it comes to helping your site rank in search engines. You need to ensure that you are routinely updating your website with content that is informative and truly valuable, whether it’s designed to solve a problem, to offer tips, or to keep the reader up to date on a given topic. If you’re not a writer, then this could be one aspect of your marketing strategy that could require some professional help.
Poor Website Speed
While it might not seem relevant to search engines, the truth is that sites like Google do pay attention to the load speed of your website. If it takes too long to load, then they are likely to deprioritize it, causing it to drop further down in the rankings. There are a variety of different ways to improve the page load speed of your site, such as optimizing your images so that they don’t have huge file sizes, enabling browser caching, and getting rid of any old or out-of-date widgets or plugins that take too long to load.
It’s Not Mobile-Friendly
Smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices are taking a growing share of modern online traffic. As a result, Google and other search engines use a mobile-frist indexing system, meaning that sites that are optimized to these mobile designs are likely to appear higher on their search results. Take the time to make sure that your site is friendly to all devices. It helps not only with your search marketing but in generally expanding your audience.
Poor Technical SEO
There are a whole host of technical elements beneath the hood of the website that can impact your search engine rankings. This includes things like broken links, missing alt text on pages, improper URL structure, and ineffective internal linking. Working with reliable local web design services ensures that not only does your website look good and work well, but it’s designed for marketing success on the net, including technical SEO. A lot of SEO service providers offer a technical SEO audit tool that can go through your site and show you all of the things that need to be changed.
Lacking Online Security
Nowadays, online users are becoming a lot more savvy about which websites are safe to use and which are not. In particular, they are becoming aware of the value of sites that feature a “HTTPS” in their URL, and a padlock symbol beside it. Google is also well aware of this particular market of online security. It priortizies secure websites, and as a result, ranks those without security certificates lower in tis search results. Find and install a reliable SSL certificate. Not only does it improve your search rankings, but it builds a sense of trust and security amongst your visitors, as well.
High Bounce Rate
Sometimes, there might not be a technical reason as to why, exactly, Google isn’t priortiizing your site. However, Google measures sites based on user experiences, as well. If there are users who arrive at your site, but leave quickly after, leading to a high bounce rate, then it indicates to Google that they didn’t find what they wanted by visiting yoursite. There are a host of ways to reduce the bounce rate on your website, such as improving readability and immediate engagement with your content, enhancning navigation, and adding calls-to-action that encourage visitors to keep clicking through your site and keep engaging with you content.
You Don’t Have Enough Backlinks
As mentioned, it’s important to make sure that the internal links throughout your website work well and are structured in a way that makes sense and provides context for each page. However, links to websites outside of your own are just as important as well. When you are able to get backlinks to your website, from other sites that are reputable and have a certain degree of authority, your website alos gets more authority as a result in Google’s eyes. Creating a backlink strategy, including PR campaigns and influencer outreach can help you build those links on other sites. It’s not only good for SEO, but for building the brand of your site and business at the same time.
A Lack of Content Structure
It’s not just the contents of your content (aka, the subject, writing, and information) that matters, but the style of your content, as well. To that end, you should ensure that your content is structured effectively in a way that improves not just how well search engines can read it, but how well your visitors can read it as well. This includes using things such as H1, H2, and H3 tags, as well as paragraph breaks, subheaders, and bullet points to make sure that it’s easy for readers to look over and parse, and to find the specific information that they want to read.
Poor Local SEO Optimization
How effective your SEO efforts are depend, at least in part, on what exactly you are trying to achieve with them. The tips above may be enough if, for instance, you are simply trying to increase your reach across the internet and to bring in more traffic, more clicks and, hopefully, more conversions. However, if you’re looking to appeal to a specific market, especially a local market, then you should be taking on a local SEO strategy, as well. This includes things like including local and region/city/town-specific keywords in your content, setting up a Google business profile, and more.
A Lack of User Experience
If your users are having a tough time navigating your website, then they are a lot more likely to leave, which is going to contribute to the high bounce rate that, as mentioned above, can see your site falling down the search engine rankings. Take the time to test your website, having new users approach it and see if they can use the existing layout to find specific content. If the layout proves too confusing or outdated and they’re not able to find the content they’re looking for, then it’s time to change it up. Create a user-friendly website with clear navigation and intuitive design, preferable with the help of a web designer, using readable fonts and structured layouts.
It’s Out of Date
Whether it’s the navigation and look of the website, or the content itself, if you haven’t been updating your website, it’s going to get stagnant. Google can often tell how often a site is updated as well as when it was last updated and is likely to depriortize sites that haven’t changed in a while. What’s more, old content is naturally going to rank lower as new content comes in with more informative and up-to-date information, as well as content that is better suited to the keywords that search engine users are currently using. Maintain a content and website update calender to make sure that you don’t fall too far behind the curve.
With the tips above, you can make sure that your site is doing everything it can to get the benefits of ranking high on Google. Search engine marketing shouldn’t be the only arm of your online marketing strategy, but it should be an important one.
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