Google Rankings, improve your website’s SEO

Your website looks appealing, but those search results for your website are still languishing in the depths of the search engine result pages (SERPs). It is highly unlikely it will ever be found. To get your Google rankings higher and to get that traffic you want, what you need is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

One of the most powerful methods for getting those Google rankings higher is SEO. But, how can you utilise it?

Keywords, find the right ones to target

Google Analytics can help you find the correct keywords to target by following these pointers.

Target keywords that already drive traffic to your website, focus upon them to improve your organic traffic.

Each keyword has a specific search volume, i.e. these are the keywords that are used more often within any searches. Make sure that enough people are searching for your keywords. If only a handful of people are searching for your keyword, sure it’s unique, has less competition but it won’t drive much traffic to your website.

However, if there are a few thousand people using a particular keyword within their searches, competition will certainly be much higher but the volume of people that are interested is also higher. So, this is the better keyword to focus on.

Keywords also have a ‘Keyword Difficulty’ range (or KD), looking this range is important when choosing your keywords. You should attempt to use keywords with a lower KD range while remaining viable in the other search factors such as search volume and relevancy. Tools such as SEMRush can help you find the KD range of any particular search term.

Use keywords with a high business value. Regardless of the amount of traffic your website receives, that traffic would count for nothing if those users don’t convert. So try to find keywords that have a conversion rate that is much higher.

Improve your On-Site SEO

This is one of the simpler methods to deploy, but here are a few tips.

Terms that come after the initial keyword are slightly less important to Google, so it is important to have your keywords mentioned in your content as soon as you can. The ‘title’ tag is a good location for this.

Content that is lengthy tends to rank higher. Apparently, around 1800 words is the minimum target. It is said that there is a correlation between higher rankings and content length according to marketers with experience of SEO.

Content relevancy is another factor. Google looks at your content relevancy because they want the search results they return to the user to be accurate and therefore happy. The more information you create that is relevant, the higher ranking Google will place your content. As a general rule of thumb, you should use your keyword about 2 to 3 times in each of your pages content. A popular WordPress plugin to help you in this regard is Yoast SEO.

Match Search Intent with Content

How users interact with your website determines how Google will rank your website. How long does a user stay on your website? What sections do they more frequently visit? If users are happy with the content they have found and don’t search for anything else thereafter, Google will move your page up the rankings.

Understanding what your users are searching for and then matching your content based on that will improve your SEO.

Consider your Technical SEO

Be sure that your technical SEO is optimal, check upon it’s functionality constantly. Make sure your website is mobile friendly especially as more and more purchases are made from mobile devices. Again, SEMRush can perform a website audit to assess your technical SEO and recommend improvements. So, monitor these aspects to keep your technical SEO in check.

• Website speed
• Mobile friendliness
• Ensuring everything functions as it should, such as contact forms; any chatbots and subscriber sign ups.

All of the above will affect your bounce rate so you should ensure that your website functionality does not become an issue for your users. Their experience of using your website should delight them. For an outline of how we build and design our client’s websites to achieve this, head on over to our web design services page.

Lowering bounce rates

Speaking of bounce rates, keeping this rate to minimum is the aim. Generally, an excellent bounce rate benchmark is within the range of 26% to 40%. People are visual, most of the information people process is visual. You visit a website that has content that interests you, but you are served with a black and white page with tiny text. It is likely you will lose interest and go elsewhere.

These days the competition is huge and therefore your website needs to stand out. Images will grab attention more easily than text and engagement will increase through the use of video. But, there needs to be content too. Flooding a page with a lot of videos and images will just overwhelm the user and push up your bounce rate. Try to strike a fine balance.

Navigation plays a part in this too. Your users should have no issues in finding what they are looking for. Using tools like Hotjar, a heat mapping tool can help you get an insight of how your users are interacting with your website.

Latent Semantic Index keywords

This is an advanced tactic. Latent Semantic Index keywords (or LSI keywords) utilises a powerful Google ranking algorithm to determine content relevance. For example, if your page topic was travel, then LSI keywords that would be relevant are ‘adventure’, ‘best places to visit’ and ‘where to travel’.

It shows Google you are discussing that topic. The more in-depth you are with LSI keywords, higher up the rankings Google will place you for relevancy.

Wrapping up

Understanding and then leveraging Google ranking factors is no easy task especially with all the competition doing exactly the same thing. But our digital agency marketing team is ready to assist you every step of the way. So, if your business or organisation wants to stand out from the crowd by creating a more effective and engaging website that ranks effectively across desktop and mobile, we would love to hear from you.