Have you recently published your business’ webpage and am wondering why you do not show up on Google searches? You might be thinking - how am I supposed to get my pages to rank? While there is no one quick way to get you to that #1 spot in search engine result pages (SERP), there are several factors you can focus on to get closer to that coveted top one to three spots.
Maintaining your business’ online presence is crucial to reach more customers. Of the many search engines used by digital natives, Google is one of the biggest players, along with Yahoo, Bing, and YouTube.
If you’ve done some basic research on how to ‘optimize your site, you may have heard some recommendations to “increase your site’s domain authority” or “do on-page optimization”, or “publish more content.” But which of those things should you really focus on first?
Well, the answer is that for Google to show your page on search results, you need to make Google trust you. That means, Google should see that your website is truly helpful, authoritative, and an expert on your target subject matter.
Below are several “trust factors” several SEO experts would recommend you to focus on to increase your overall web visibility. Remember: the more Google trusts your webpage, the higher the probability for it to rank.
Google Search follows its own set of guidelines when deciding which of the millions of available content online it will show up on a particular web search. These guidelines are meant to gauge your website’s overall helpfulness, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust based on the content you provide. Publishing high-quality blogs or pages is not equal to writing a piece stuffed with hundreds of keywords, or simply duplicating content you have found online.
Google bots or spiders crawl the web for pages that best address the intent of the user:
For instance, if someone searches for “best dessert in town”, Google will not only look for “best dessert” but other related words such as “ice cream”, or “donut”, or “candies” and other shops close to the searcher’s location at the time of search.
An internal or inbound link is a link from another site pointing to your soon-to-be published page. If you find it hard to get a backlink from another site, you can add inbound links to your new page from another page that already exist on your website, so long as it is relevant to your new page’s topic.
For example, if you already have a page about Social media marketing, and wish to publish a new page about “Facebook marketing”, you can add an inbound link from the social media marketing page, going to your Facebook marketing page.
Make sure your brand name appears consistently on every piece of content, social media post, or video you publish online. If you are using the full name “ABC Company” on most marketing materials, make sure it appears the same on other platforms, and not “ABC Group” or “ABC” or “Company ABC” so as not to confuse your readers.
As much as possible, your website should focus on a single core topic and your goal is to become an authoritative source or expert on this topic. If your website is all about Gardening, you can grow your expertise by creating several pieces of content about fruit gardening, herb gardening, native plants, flower gardening and more.
You can also do a basic Google search by typing “gardening” and check to see what are some of the questions commonly asked under the “People Also Ask” section. These can be good sources of potential blogs to add to your website.
Did you know that aside from running paid advertisements, you can also grow your audience base by simply publishing truly helpful content that addresses these common questions or problems faced by your target market? This is called organic marketing, and while it takes a bit longer than ads to produce results, it can do your brand a lot of good if you start working on your content strategy today.
If you are offering a specific service, you should do some research on who your competitors are. There are two types of competitors you should consider. First is your industry competitors. These are the brands or companies that people who can benefit from your service, normally buy from or go to when in need. These brands offer the same or quite similar services as you do.
The other and lesser known type of competitors are your SEO (search engine optimization). These are the brands that show up on the top spots on Google (after the sponsored ads) when you search for words or phrases that are relevant to your service.
For example, if you sell “accounting services”, and you search for “accounting service” on Google, the brands who consistently show up at the top are likely your competitors, even if they do not offer the same service since Google believes these websites are relevant to the phrase you searched for.
Finally, while this article is not meant to do a deep dive into the technical aspects of optimizing a new page, it should be part of your to-do list to read up on technical terms that marketers normally refer to. An example of a good resource is Google Search Central, which provides you with free SEO resources and a lot of content to read up on.
Once you have written, optimized, and published your page, the next part will be to sit and wait. Getting a page to rank first does not happen overnight, and oftentimes you may need to constantly update your page with new links, new information, or new data based on market trends.
Don’t get tricked into working with SEO companies that offer instant ranking without specifying how they do it. There is a right way of building your site’s trust and making your way to the top of Google search engine results.
Following the right strategies, staying away from spammy or so-called “black hat” tactics, and continuously educating yourself about what is new in the digital marketing world is perhaps the best way to stay compliant with Google’s rules, and grow your brand’s following organically.
If you need help improving your page visibility and online rankings, TECHnasyon offers free SEO training for everyone. Keep checking our page for updates on when the next batch will be offered!