Your brand and marketing team has loads of things to keep track of nowadays. The number of likes, followers, retweets, comments, shares, tags, mentions, etc. With countless social media platforms available just for marketing, it can be difficult to make time to keep track of your Google ranking on top of that. But it doesn’t mean you should ignore it. Google is still the most popular website worldwide and gets more than 86 billion total monthly visits, holding the spot as the most popular website.
Despite the explosion of the digital marketing landscape, a high ranking on Google remains one of the best ways to boost traffic to your website. If more people visit your website, you have more opportunity to turn these visitors into new customers and the higher you rank, you can potentially win some of your competition’s potential customers. But it’s not just about winning new customers. It also helps to boost the credibility of your brand or business. If you can convince your target audience that you’re one of the most credible sources in your industry, it will also help to turn leads into paying customers. So how exactly can we do that?
Search engine optimization (SEO) remains one of the easiest ways to boost your rankings on Google. It refers to all the elements that appear on the pages of your website that you can optimize like headlines, page titles, and images. On the other hand, off-page SEO has to do with creating relevance for search engines by, for example, getting more backlinks. You also don’t want to neglect your technical SEO. Technical SEO refers to making sure that your website is designed in such a way that search engines will be able to crawl and index it easily. Content is still king, but if the search engines can’t find it, you’re kind of wasting your time.
Backlinks are links posted on a third-party website that link back to your website. They play a massive role in Google’s algorithm. So, one of your main goals should be to get visitors to share your posts on social media. But you can only expect visitors to do that if you post high-quality content regularly. Not only do backlinks show that users find your content useful, but it also helps to show to others that you’re knowledgeable about your industry. And, the more people who link to your content, the more it’s telling Google that your content is credible and shareable. You should also actively try to contact other authoritative websites and brands and asking them if they would be interested in publishing your content. This way, you can add your own backlinks to relevant content on your website. Getting authoritative websites to link back to your website can boost your domain authority (DA) score as well.
While backlinks are important, you should also focus on creating internal links. An internal link is a hyperlink that links to another page on the same domain. These help Google with finding and indexing your web pages. One of the advantages of using internal links is that the anchor text may match the content exactly. So, they’re straightforward to create and you don’t have to rely on other third-party websites. Ideally, you should place the internal links toward the beginning of the web page. This can also help to lower your bounce rate.
Include latent semantic indexing keywords. What in the %$#@ are those? Don’t worry, they’re not as complex as it sounds. LSI keywords refers to related phrases that a search engine like Google can use to get a better understanding of a page’s content. They are phrases and words that are closely connected to your main keyword. For example, if your main keyword is influencer marketing, LSI keywords can be words and phrases like social media, marketing campaigns, brands, Instagram, marketers, endorsements, etc. You get the idea!
When learning how to promote your website, your focus should be on quality through publishing expert and informative content. This should be consistent regardless of whether you’re posting on social media, writing blog articles, or partnering with influencers. It’s normal that you may be excited to get the word out right away, but it important that you prioritize quality over quantity, as this helps build trust among your audience and drive them through the marketing funnel. This is one of the best things you can do for your business in the long run.
There are three elements that Google looks at when working out the ranking potential of your website: expertise, authority, and trust. Expertise refers to the credibility and experience of your author. When visitors land on your website they will want to find content written by authors who are trustworthy and experienced. Authoritativeness basically has to do with your online reputation and the recognition that you’re getting. That’s another reason why it’s important to get authoritative sources to link back to your content. Trust has a lot to do with the other two elements. If you’ve demonstrated that you’re qualified to write about your topic and other sources turn to you for the value that you offer, Google will view you as a trustworthy source.
While rankings are important, you should also keep an eye on organic traffic. What’s the point if your target audience randomly finds your site though search, but didn’t actually visit your website? Therefore, monitoring your click-through rate is crucial. To improve your click-through rate, focus on your metadata like the URL and the metadata description that appears below the search result. It might sound insignificant, but if this info looks relevant and credible, your click-through rate will benefit which in return will boost your ranking too.
Businesses can also get a better Google ranking by creating a Google My Business profile. Your Google My Business profile helps you to control how your business appears across Google products such as Search and Maps. Make sure that all your business details, like contact info, business hours, and address, are correct and complete. If your Google My Business profile closely links to what your target audience typically searches for, Google will find it easier to match your profile to the right searches. Focus on reviews as well. If your business has more Google reviews, it can help to boost your local ranking on the search engine itself.
Your overall branding can also impact your ranking. While the quality of your content will play a huge role, it will be of less help if your branding isn’t applied consistently. While a lot of the focus is on creating more content, don’t forget to audit your existing content. If your current level of expertise or standards now exceeds an older post, it’s better that you remove it. Whatever the case, don’t keep content on your site because you think quantity will make you look better. Just like many things in life, quantity shouldn’t replace quality.
Not only should you audit your brand and content regularly, but it’s also key that you monitor your SEO results. While it won’t improve your SEO directly, if you don’t know how much organic traffic you’re getting, then again, what’s the point? This also helps you to double-check that you are, ranking for all the keywords that you’re targeting. Ask yourself, does the traffic boost convert to more customers and sales? Like we’ve previously mentioned, SEO is time-consuming and if you don’t track your results, you won’t know where to make changes and if it’s worth the time and effort.
There are many technical elements like mobile optimization and web page speed that you’ll be more inclined to leave to the professionals. But it doesn’t mean that you should do everything else on your own either. If there’s any other aspect that you feel you need help with, hire the help of the professionals. We’re talking about your online presence here. That’s a lot that’s at stake. At Crunch Fource, we are those people you can look to help conquer your digital needs.
If you’ve dreaded SEO in the past, don’t drag old fears along with you going forward as it could affect your Google ranking. So, while it might sound like lots of work and commitment, if you’re working on one aspect, you’re also busy improving several other elements at the same time. It’s a domino effect. And, if you don’t know where to start, your content is a pretty good place. After all, all clicks on Google can lead back to your content. We understand that ranking on Google may not seem as easy as it sounds, especially with all the competition jumping on board with online marketing in today’s world. Our team at Crunch Fource is here to help you every step of the way.
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