How to increase your Google ranking for FREE!
You have a website but now you need your potential customers to FIND it! There’s lots of ways to do this and I’m going to explain how you can achieve more website visitors for free.
The higher your website is listed in Google search results, the better. You will probably have first-hand knowledge of this as someone who uses Google to search for products and services. Do you ever look at the search results past page 1 or 2? Probably not. When you search for most topics, you will notice that the first 4 links at the top of page 1 in Google search results are Adverts. You will see the word “Ad” in the top left of these listings to notify you that the listed website is using Google Ads. This means that the website owner is paying Google to be listed at the top of page 1 for whatever it is you searched for. You can find out more about Google Ads here but basically it is a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising tool. This is a great way of promoting your website and getting more visitors but there is a fee for this service that some small business owners may not want to spend. Furthermore, various marketing research sources on the web claim that approximately 70% to 80% of users completely ignore paid advertisements and skip them to view the organic search listings below.
What are organic search results?
Organic search results (also known as natural search results) are the unpaid results that appear on search engines like Google when users enter a search term. They appear directly underneath the adverts and are ranked according to their relevance to the search term. So how do you get your website to appear at the top of organic search results? There are a number of ways to achieve this but it is important to note that it takes time, effort and perseverance.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Search Engine Optimisation is the process of improving the quality and quantity of unpaid traffic to your website. From quality content to user experience, here are some of my top SEO tips for obtaining strong rankings in 2022.
Create quality content
When people search for something online, they want to find original content that gives them a great answer to what they are looking for. That is why Google prioritises high-quality and relevant content over everything else when it comes to ranking websites in search results. Your content must include keywords which are phrases that people type in to search engines. For example, if you were looking to buy a new jacket, you might type something like “women’s denim jacket” into Google. This phrase is called a keyword.
Remember to write for your audience. Don’t use unnecessary jargon that will baffle your customers and add new content to your website on a regular basis via a blog or new products or services pages. The more new content you publish, the more frequently Google and other search engines will index your pages, and the more quickly your content will rank.
If you don’t have the time to write new content for your website, you can employ a copywriter to do this for you. I can help with creating new content and uploading it to your website on a regular basis – Get in touch today and we can discuss your requirements.
Improve page loading speed
Page loading speed refers to how quickly your content loads when someone visits a page on your site. Every second really does count! Today’s users expect a website page to load quickly and if it doesn’t, they will move on to the next website. Google research has shown that when loading times increase from 1 to 3 seconds, the probability of a visitor leaving (known as the bounce rate) can increase by as much as 32%.
Google Page Speed Insights will measure your page load speeds and offer suggestions on how to improve performance but you may want a Web Designer to help you implement these suggestions – it really depends on how much you are willing to do yourself. If your website is built in WordPress there are some great free plugins that automatically do a lot of the work for you, including compression, reducing CSS, Javascript and HTML code, reducing redirects, leverage browser caching and optimising images.
Backlinks
A backlink – also known as an imbound link or external link – is simply a link from one website to another. Web pages with a high number of backlinks tend to have a higher organic search engine ranking. They indicate to Google that other people find your content valuable enough to add a link to it from their own website.
This can initially be achieved by submitting your website to online business directories, leaving blog comments on other websites and replying to forum threads. You could also be a Guest Blogger on another website which links back to your own website. However, the best way to get more backlinks is to write quality content (like a blog post) that others want to link back to from their own websites. Remember to add share buttons to the bottom of your web pages to make it easier for others to share your content.
Improve user experience (UX)
Keeping your visitors engaged by improving their user experience is a key factor in improving search rankings. It’s important to try and keep your content visually appealing by incorporating quality imagery, videos, screenshots and infographics. The use of white space – also known as blank space – improves focus and legibility so try not to cram too much information on to each web page.
Avoid using pop-ups as much as you can and website intro pages are definitely best left in the 90’s. They will only annoy your visitors and Google knows this. Since 2017, Google has been penalising websites that use intrusive elements in their design.
Responsive design is a must – Globally, the latest statistics shows that approximately 51% of all internet traffic is attributed to mobile devices and smartphones. As a result of this, mobile-friendly design is paramount and responsive design achieves this. Responsive websites are designed to work on any size screen, from the biggest desktops to the smallest smartphones. Instead of creating different layouts to fit different sizes and resolutions, responsive sites check the size of the device being used and adjust themselves automatically to fit.
If you would like me to help you increase your website’s Google search ranking organically, please get in touch. I can also provide advice on Google Ads marketing and how to promote your website via social media.