Did you realize that nearly 51 percent of web traffic comes from organic searches? If you are like most business owners, you realize the value of having a functional and appealing website.
One of the biggest mistakes most business owners make after building a website is failing to optimize it for search engine success. Failing to put keyword-rich content on a website will make it very hard for consumers to find it.
Annually, businesses in the United States spend about $65 billion on SEO campaigns. The only way to ensure the money you spend on marketing is put to good use is by working with seasoned professionals. Hiring a professional company can help you achieve your marketing goals with ease.
When optimizing your existing site, consider several factors. The following are some of the most essential SEO ranking factors you should worry about.
1. Making Sure Your Website URL is Accessible
Ensuring your URL is easily accessible and crawlable by Google bots is essential. For Google to properly index your website, its bots must be able to access your page's content. If you are looking to help these bots out, consider these suggestions.
- Using a robots.txt file that can tell Google where to look for information on your existing site.
- A comprehensive site map listing all your pages is also advisable. If you have a WordPress-based site, you can easily set up your sitemap with the Yoast SEO plugin. For non-WordPress sites, you can use one of the many free online sitemap generators on the market.
- You also need to think about purchasing an SSL certificate for your website. Since 2014, Google has been using website security as a ranking factor.
While implementing these changes on your website may be a bit time-consuming and costly, it is well worth the effort and investment.
2. Keep An Eye on Page Load Speeds
One of the main factors Google considers when ranking websites is page load speed. Google is on a mission to improve the user experience for modern consumers, which is why it insists on fast-loading pages. Recent Google updates show they are now also focusing on mobile page load speed.
If you are unsure about how fast your pages are loading, you can always use Google’s mobile testing tool. To properly address slow-loading page issues, you will need to work with an experienced developer.
These loading issues can be caused by everything from large picture files to coding errors. By allowing professionals to check out your website, you can get the answers you need quickly.
3. Your Site has to be Mobile-Friendly
Optimizing your site for mobile users is also a great way to improve your Google ranking. With more and more people using mobile devices to access websites, responsive websites are now a must.
Google's mobile-first index now draws results from responsive websites. This means that if your site is not mobile-friendly, you will not appear on the first page of Google search results.
- When trying to optimize your site for mobile users, be sure to consider things like:
- Whether or not your site automatically resizes pages to fit the device being used.
- Using larger fonts to make pages more readable on smaller screens.
- Ensuring that your menus are easy to tap and use on mobile devices.
- Making sure interstitial ads aren’t covering your content.
By implementing these changes, you can easily attract more mobile users to your site. An experienced website developer should have no problem auditing your existing site and making the necessary changes to make it more mobile-friendly.
4. Your Domain Age and Authority
Statistics show that most of the websites on the first page of Google search results are over three years old. The team at Ahrefs conducted a study of two million websites. This study showed that sites less than a year old find it nearly impossible to reach the first page of Google.
This is why you don’t need to get discouraged when your relatively new site isn’t performing as well as you think it should. You also need to check your site’s domain authority. This can be checked using the Moz Domain Authority tool.
With the results from this tool, you can get an idea of how high a particular page on your website is likely to rank in search results.
5. Optimizing Your Content is Essential
Having the right keywords in your website's content is also essential to achieving search engine dominance. Luckily, several online tools let you check the monthly search volume for a particular keyword. You need to find keywords that get a lot of searches but don’t have a lot of competition
They will have no problem giving your company a voice and developing engaging content for your site. The latest, and possibly the most effective, form of such content today is video marketing.
Not only does it allow you the opportunity to get a 0 ground ranking in Google, but it also allows much user-friendlier optimization, especially when it comes to social media, as it is shown in this great resource on how video can help you rank higher, in according to which video is already taking over the digital platforms and by 2020> it will be a dominating force all over.
6. Landing Quality Backlinks
For years, backlinks have been one of the strongest ranking signals on the planet. The more links you can secure from high-authority domains, the easier you will find it to get to the first page of Google.
Recommended: An Actionable Guide To Analyzing Competitor Backlinks And Building A Backlink Strategy
Recently, Google updated, cleaned, and filtered low-quality backlink profiles. This is why you need to take a look at your backlink profile and note what is on it.
7. Social Signals and Brand Power
Anytime a person performs a branded search for your company, it sends a strong signal to Google’s algorithm.
The higher the number of branded searches a site receives, the more likely it is to rank high on Google’s search results pages. Combining your brand power with a great social media presence is a winning recipe for search engine success.
8. Providing a Great User Experience
As the Google algorithm advances, it will increasingly prioritize user experience. If your website is difficult to navigate or filled with pop-ups, you will find it increasingly difficult to stay at the top of the Google heap. Focusing on making your site functional first can save you a lot of headaches in the long run.
9. Posting Content on a Regular Basis
Some business owners think that posting content is something they only have to do every couple of months. The fact is that sites that consistently post high-quality content are far more likely to reach and stay at the top of Google search results.
This is why you need to develop and stick to a content posting schedule. Ideally, you should post blogs at least once a week to get Google's attention.
Optimizing a website for search engine success is not an overnight process. It will usually take years before you start to reap the rewards of these efforts, so hang in there.
