How do I get my website to rank higher on Google?

 

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of the best organic (FREE) marketing tools your brand could be employing. In short, if you do it well, then you will appear higher in Google’s rankings which, in turn, should drive more internet users (who have searched a term surrounding your business/product) to your website. This should help people ultimately, become a customer with you!

There are lots of tips and tricks that businesses have tried to employ to help them rank higher on Google. Let’s take a look at some of the most effective:

1. Improve your website or user experience (UX)

Research by SEMrush suggests that there are four main ranking factors that influence a website’s ranking on Google:

1. Website visits
2. Time on site
3. Pages per session
4. Bounce rate.

It is all four of these factors that directly relate to the people that are visiting your website and the experience that they are having. If they’re struggling to navigate it or there are a few broken links, then it’s likely they are going to bounce or possibly find business elsewhere.

Pretty simple? Carry out regular health checks on your website to ensure everything is working as it should be, and, if anything can be improve! You should even ask friends and family to give you advice on what parts of your site you can work on to make the experience better.

2. Back-links

These are links from other websites to yours – and Google favours them very highly when it comes to ranking your website! But don’t just use any old website to link to you. The Google algorithm sees high-authority domains as a trustful source, so trying to gain links from reputable companies will do great things for your SEO. You can do this by networking or messaging like-minded brands directly.

3. Use H1 and H2 tags on every page

When Google indexes your website, it searches for the use of header tags in your content to easily categorise and store the text. By structuring your content with clear headings, Google will know that your site is easily readable for site users too, again, adding to a better search engine ranking for you. This simple step can make all of the difference.

4. Write regular content

Having high-quality blogs or articles on your website is a great way to increase traffic. Writing around topics that target your key terms will add to your authority on the topic and in turn, increase your site traffic. Make sure your content also contains links to internal pages on the website – it helps Google to make connections to your other web-pages and gain a deeper understanding of your brand.

5. Optimise your images

If your website uses imagery, make sure the files are optimised for Google. Compressing your files, having descriptive names and alt-text will help not only with the loading speed of your site (boosts SEO) but is another way of telling Google what features on your website. The more things you can show to Google to prove you are an authority in your business, the likelier you are to rank higher.

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