Most of the clients I’ve worked with have asked me how to get on the first page of Google.
It seems to be the number one goal of most businesses because they assume that most of their attention online will come from Google and that will convert to the most business.
In some industries, this is absolutely true. But it's important to understand what SEO is and whether or not it will be the more effective tool for your business.
Let’s First Discuss: What Is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization and basically what it means is that you are optimizing your website so that search engines like Google will rank your website among one of the first results your customers see when they search for keywords related to your business.
For example, if I were searching for marketing professionals and I saw Pivot Marketing Solutions on the first page of Google, I would be more likely to click on one of those first search results and if I liked what I saw, then I would likely give them my business.
The tricky part about SEO is that it is solely dependent on Google, or other search engines, and what they consider quality information. Basically, you have to play by Google’s rules if you want them to rank you accordingly.
The lesson to take from this, is that ultimately you can do everything that Google tells you to do but at the end of the day they still decide what shows up first. So what you want to focus on is making sure your website complies with those rules and waiting for the results.
I Know, I Know...
There are tons of businesses online that promise they can get you to the front page of Google and they may have some very effective tools to improve your SEO rankings, but their work is still put to the same test as everyone else and it is still completely up to Google to make the final decision of their first page rankings.
So What Can You Do To Improve SEO?
There are some basic steps you can take to start to improve your SEO rankings:
- Optimize Your Content
- Optimize Your Images
- Provide Fresh, Valuable Content Regularly
Optimize Your Content
There are tons of great tools out there to help you optimize your content and when we train our customers on how to use their websites, we include this service.
For example, one of the industry leaders is called Yoast SEO, and it basically gives you an outline to optimize your content for search engines.
It will tell you how many words to use in an article, what keywords to use, how long your title should be, etc.
Optimize Your Images
A lot of people think that as long as their website images are dynamic and beautiful, that they are good to go as far as SEO. However, you have to remember that Google is not a visual machine.
Yes, it's true that dynamic pictures will attract your audience, but Google is not a person. Google is a machine that awards businesses who optimize their images for people.
There are a few simple things you can do to help this process:
- Name Your Photos
- Use Alt Text
- Use Keywords In Both
Name Your Photos Before You Upload Them
Let's go back to the point about Google and how it sees your website. If you've ever seen website code, it looks like a bunch of jumbled up letters and numbers that may not make much sense to you. However, this coding language tells your website what to display and tells other internet machines, like Google, what is on your website.
If you've ever uploaded an image to your computer, you'll see that it assigns a random name, usually a number, like IMG4279865, or a similar name to each photo. If you upload that to your website, it may not matter to you because you can see the image, but Google can't see, so you need give your image a name that Google can understand.
Renaming your pictures also helps users when their internet connection is slow or a picture isn't loading. They can figure out what the photo is based on the description.
Use Alt Text
The alt text is usually set up in the backend of your website and its purpose is to display a description of your images when they don't load properly.
For example, if you were writing a post about yellow birds and you have a beautiful image starting off your post, you could use a description like "yellow-bird-sitting-on-branch" as a good alt text description.
Google sees this as helpful for consumers reading your information.
Use Keywords In Both
We talked about using a keyword for your posts and that there are tools that can help you decide which keywords to use and how often to use them to rank well. You can also use these keywords in your image titles and alt text descriptions.
Going back to our example earlier, if your keyword is bird, or yellow bird, using a title and alt text description like "yellow-bird-sitting-on-branch" is going to help your post rank better for yellow birds.
One More Note...
It's important to optimize your photos and your website speed to make sure they load quickly. A dynamic image doesn't do any good if your audience can't see it in time.
Provide Fresh, Valuable Content Regularly
One of the most important things to remember about Google is that it prioritizes websites that are providing new content regularly.
Google sees this as an effort to stay up-to-date in your industry and provide relevant information for your consumers. This is why it's so important to regularly update your website. If your website has not been updated recently, it can be seen as stagnant and possibly irrelevant because the information may be outdated.
One of the easiest ways to do this is with a Blog or Resource page.
You don't have to completely change your website constantly to achieve this goal.
Instead, you can create a blog or resource page on your website that is regularly being updated with new information that is valuable to your customers.
You can teach your customers something new, and educate them on why you are solving their problems, which can lead to more sales for you.
Google sees this as helpful and will reward you in your Google rankings.
To Conclude...
As a business with an online presence, you want to rank well on Google, and in order to do so, you have to play by their rules.
But with a few easy tweaks to your website, you can optimize it according to their guidelines and benefit from improved exposure.