A website is an important tool for any business to have and everyone knows how difficult it is to create one that fits all your needs. You may have all the essentials for a good website like having informative and interesting pages that will entice the people on your website, but people need to find your site first. This means that people will need to be searching for the things that you offer. And your website needs to accurately display that information.
The biggest search engine in the US is Google. Google is a search engine that will suggest websites that will have accurate and relevant content to find what you might be looking for. It works great, but ask yourself, when you search for something, do you ever go past the first page of results? Or even past the first three pages of web results? Probably not, because what you’ll be looking for will be sitting on the first page. That’s where your website needs to be, because people don’t look far or too long to find what they need. Ranking your website on the first page will get your website more attention, so let’s see why it isn’t on there.
Assessing The Situation
For example: You own a clothing company for men.
You can start searching with general keywords like “mens clothing”, but you would run into thousands of websites and large retailers like Amazon or Target due to competition. If you use longer keywords such as “mens cotton graphic tee”, it will help narrow the results, but you have to consider that people won’t use this many keywords in their search that often.
If you don’t come up for your business using a variety of keyword searches, then you need to make adjustments to your website and its SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization.
What Is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization can get a little complicated, but to keep it short, it’s the variety of ways you can adjust your website and things outside your website so that it will more likely show up on higher pages of Google. The better the rank, the more likely it will be on the first page or so. There are a lot of adjustments that you can make to your website that can improve it, so here are just a few to list.
- Your website is too slow
- You don't use the right keywords
- You focus on keywords that are too competitive
- You focus on keywords that are too rare
- You don't have enough content
- You don't have enough backlinks
Having these features does not guarantee your website to rank higher though. It will help in a variety of ways, but because Google’s search algorithm changes frequently and it's mostly a trade secret, what may work today could possibly not work tomorrow. Google wants to make sure that people will be provided the most relevant and highest quality content that they are searching for. Your website will not be the only one using all the same features. Larger companies take advantage of using paid services, but for the most part, can still be outranked by smaller businesses that have better quality content. So, here’s what you can do to help.
And this is why it's a good idea to work with an SEO company like us!
All About Quality
This can be broken up into two parts: improving the quality of your website and the quality of your content.
The quality of your website contains a multitude of factors that can affect the ranking. This part should answer the questions like, “Does your website provide a positive experience to users?” or “Is there too much text and not enough media?” Improving the speed of your website or even making it accessible on multiple devices are just a few examples. This can be difficult for businesses that lack the resources to include it on their website, which is where your opportunity to rank higher comes in.
The quality of your content should answer a question similar to, “How credible and relevant is your content?” You are essentially trying to get Google to trust your website and make sure that what you are providing is correct and not gibberish. Just like improving your website, your content can have various forms of factors that can affect this. For example, having a blog article that is less than 600 words can seem a bit uninformative and rank less than an article with 1,000 words. Reviews and having other websites talk about your content increases the credibility of your website as well, which can greatly improve your ranking. It’s similar to viral media. You see a post with a couple hundred, maybe a thousand views. Next thing you know, it blows up and it’s everywhere on various social media platforms, multiple websites or news outlets join in, and the original poster is on Ellen explaining their success. Having your content credible and more importantly interesting for viewers to talk about, is what Google wants for their searchers to see.
Keywords
Keywords is what everyone thinks about when they think of SEO though because you use keywords to search for things on Google. For example, when you search “leather couches”, all the websites will come up with brief text under it with those keywords bolded because that is what you searched. Google doesn’t know though if you’re interested in buying a leather couch, looking up how to fix one, or articles that pertain to leather couches which is why there are various websites with different purposes though. Keywords are important because you want people to search a general topic, and your website to come up first. Yes, content and quality are important as previously mentioned, but keywords should help guide your searchers to your content. Using keywords in your content and even in your website can give you that edge that Google is looking for.
You can adjust your keywords in a variety of ways like using a single word or using multiple to get more specific. Use multiple or long-tail keywords when using SEO because using a few words like “mens clothing” can be too general and competitive. Long-tail keywords should focus on your specific niche to have Google users be narrowed down to your website. The amount of keywords in your content has to be observed too. If you use it too much for example, it can be seen as spam and when read, doesn’t flow with the rest of your content. Using it too little, can be seen as you not specifically talking about that topic. Changing the keywords which you focus on can have a drastic impact on the rank of your website.
The Takeaway
Google is confusing and understanding their algorithm is impossible to know fully. As mentioned, these features can help improve your ranking but will not guarantee the best rank because Google is always changing. But, at least you can monitor your rank, see where you are at in the results, and then make adjustments. It’s all trial and error to get Google to rank your website, but making sure you have a properly built website with engaging and credible content will get you in a good spot than most.
It takes a lot to understand and definitely takes time to grow. It’s not going to be instant that you’re going to rank higher up. We have other articles that are similar and can help your ranking, so be sure to check them out HERE. If you need help with the overall design of your website to make it navigate more smoothly or more responsive, then check out our similar work that can be what you’re looking for.