How to rank well on Google
SEO Best Practices for Small Business
Did you know 95% of searchers don’t go past the first page of search results, so how do you improve the your website ranking? Here are some Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) best practices that can help.
1. Make sure your content is aligned with search intent
If you want to rank well on Google you need to keep search intent in mind. Search intent or what is also known as “user intent” is the purpose behind every search query. It’s the goal or intention a web user has when entering a search term into a search engine. When your web content is aligned to the types of words that a user would enter into a search engine, it is more likely to be a match and more likely to appear in the search results.
2. Write compelling page titles, tags & meta descriptions
If you are not sure how to do this ask your web developer to help. Your page title and meta description are two of the most important meta tags on your page. A meta description is an HTML tag that summarises the content on a webpage. It’s the snippet of text, often around 160 characters long, that appears under your page title in search engine result pages. Make sure these tags include the right keywords words and that meta tags are a compelling summary of the page.
3. Make sure the images on your webpage are optimised
In the back end of your website you will need to label your images using tags that help search engines understand what images are being shown on the page. Also remember to use meaningful titles for your images, give them proper titles rather than image1.png, image2.png which are very general and vague. Remember images play an important role in improving the user experience of visitors on your site.
4. Link to other pages within your website by building an internal linking structure
To help Google and other search engines understand your website content, internal links can be useful. Internal URL links help to establish an information hierarchy for your website and give Google and other search engines a deeper understanding of the content on your page and how it all fits together.
5. Improve your page speed
It’s a good idea to optimise your page speed. If your site takes a long time to load, you might get some frustrated website visitors, and over time it can negatively affect your rankings.
6. Make URLs SEO-Friendly
To rank well on Google a good URL structure is needed. It provides both users and search engines with an idea of what the destination page is all about. Think about the names of your web pages and make sure they are relevant and use the right words to describe what the page is about. Again if you are unsure how, speak to your web developer.
7. Earn authoritative backlinks
Google recognises backlinks as votes of confidence in your website so if someone it linking back to your site it means your information is useful or relevant. Despite several changes to Google’s search algorithm and ranking system, Google still considers backlinks to be a key ranking signal when it comes to the importance of a website.
8. Create Useful Content
Focus on developing high quality content that is informative, helpful, educational or entertaining for your ideal clients and publish this content regularly. Use the right keywords for your audience. Fresh new content is important to Google. Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet for zooming to the top of the Search Engine Results Pages. However, it’s best to focus on quality above all else. And, of course, user intent.
Feel free to reach out and contact us if you need some help or have any questions.