The internet is loaded with every kind of conceivable website and company. While that’s great for the consumers and business looking for services out there, it’s not so great for your and your site. But, by taking a few simple steps, you could improve your website’s Google ranking pretty quickly, increase the traffic to it and boost your sales.
Any one of the tips we’re going to share will have some small effect. But, it’s best if you can implement at least three to help improve a number of aspects of the way your site works. That way, the bots that crawl the internet can see a broad improvement in your site – and reward that hard work accordingly.
1. Well-written content
This is one detail that you should always work hard to achieve. To clarify, when we say written content, that includes:
- Blog posts.
- Meta descriptions.
- Written web content describing your products or services.
- Links, descriptions and captions of any images and video content.
- Titles, headings and sub-headings.
All of these details are monitored and assessed when websites are considered for their position in Google page rankings. Those sites with well-written content, tend to rank higher.
That means you should always ensure that content is written correctly and in the right style to suit your industry and audience. Spellings and grammar may not always seem super important when you’re desperate to increase the level of content on your site. But, if you publish badly written and created content, it simply won’t give you the benefits you’re hoping for. That’s from Google rankings or from any site visitors who read it
In addition, while SEO is still an important part of supporting a high Google ranking, if the language used in your written content isn’t natural and flowing, the online crawlers will pick up on that.
2. Site speed
This is another important part of achieving a high rank on Google and other search engines. Indeed, according to Forbes, site speed is the most critical detail when looking to improve your site rankings.
And, research from Kissmetrics and Neil Patel shows that:
- 47% of consumers expect a website to load in 2 seconds.
- Some 40% of users will leave a website that takes 3 second to load.
Source: Neil Patel
If your site fails to deliver requested information, pages and next steps within just a couple of seconds, then you’ll find your customers will soon take their trade elsewhere. Avoid that by spending some time on ensuring your site speeds are as quick as they need to be.
3. Header, sub-header and META SEO-Optimization
We briefly touched on this detail in the well-written content section. But, not only should all your META tags be correctly spelt and well-written, you should always use the tags, urls and links as an opportunity to boost your SEO key words and phrases.
Understand what your keywords and phrases are for your written content and ensuring they are used them within that content is only the first step. You have other opportunities to boost your key words and phrases use through other means.
- Get your key word/phrase in at least one sub-heading of your content.
- Include it in your META description.
- Make sure it features in the url to that specific page.
- Include them in your image file paths, too.
Its actually easier to do this than you might think. And, with practise, it will become second nature, while still proving notably beneficial to your Google ranking.
Build a selection of outbound and internal links.
When you’re creating content on your site, it’s a great idea to include links within that content to relevant outbound and internal pages and sites.
By creating outbound links, you’re doing a number of things including showing that any data, studies or quotes you use come from a credible source. By linking to sites in the same or similar industry as you, you’re also showing the Google bots exactly who your target audience is and what you’re advertising, the services you offer or products you sell.
Internal links are where you direct your visitors to other pages on your website and help show that your site is full of information and details that are relevant to and will attract your users. Internal links also help keep visitors on your site for longer, by showing them many different pages and parts of your site that they’re interested in.
4. Build a selection of outbound and internal links
When you’re creating content on your site, it’s a great idea to include links within that content to relevant outbound and internal pages and sites.
By creating outbound links, you’re doing a number of things including showing that any data, studies or quotes you use come from a credible source. By linking to sites in the same or similar industry as you, you’re also showing the Google bots exactly who your target audience is and what you’re advertising, the services you offer or products you sell.
Internal links are where you direct your visitors to other pages on your website and help show that your site is full of information and details that are relevant to and will attract your users. Internal links also help keep visitors on your site for longer, by showing them many different pages and parts of your site that they’re interested in.
By building a selection of internal and outbound links on your site, your showing the search engine crawlers that you’re a real site, with understanding of what’s interesting to your target audience.
With regards to a user perspective, you’re helping to encourage them to engage with your site for longer. The longer they stay on your site, the more likely they’ll come to trust you and become a paying customer.
5. Get your web design right
Web design is also an important part of your Google rankings. While the other parts of your site are all well created to encourage a good ranking and excellent user engagement, poor web site design will let you down if people click onto your site, but soon close it if they’re put off. Then, if users are leaving your site too quickly, this will have a bad effect on your rankings.
One way to avoid this is with plenty of research. Take a look at the websites of your popular competitors and see what attributes they have in common. Uncover research on which colours work best for optimum web site user engagement. And, consider the style in which your content is written and presented.
Work on each of these areas and incorporate required changes to your existing site, or ensure that your design of a new site keeps all those important details in mind. Then, by ensuring the design of your website is:
- Suitable for your industry.
- Engaging to your target audience.
- In line with your company style.
You’ll be well on the way to building a website that ticks all the boxes for rankings bots, while also impressing your visitors and target audience.
Work on one thing at a time
If you have an existing site that needs improvement on multiple areas, it’s important to work on one improvement at a time. That means you can focus on that area and get it absolutely spot on, before moving on to the next section.
Of course, as we said earlier, it’s best to try and improve more than one detail of your site to achieve a notable rise in your Google rankings. However, if you only need to improve one area of your site, that change could bring about a clear rise, provided the other SEO aspects of your site are as they should be.
Overall, its important to regularly review your site’s metrics and rankings and see what areas could be improved upon. If you’re working hard to ensure you deliver the best user experience, you will be rewarded by higher rankings, increased customer engagement and sales growth!
