A beautiful website design, stunning imagery, fresh and engaging content……while these elements are all necessary for building a memorable online presence, they can only take you so far if consumers can’t find your website on Google.
Incorporating search engine optimization (SEO) techniques is crucial to ensuring your content ranks highly on Google and stands apart from your competitors. Let’s explore some important ranking factors your business should consider to improve search results and drive more traffic to your website.
7 Things You Can Do to Boost Your SEO Efforts
How can your business get started optimizing your website to improve search results on Google? Here are seven actions you can begin implementing right away.
1. Publish content. Fresh, relevant and consistent content is the lifeblood that feeds Google search algorithms. Quality content that’s written with your customer in mind — and optimized with targeted keywords — will increase your search engine rankings, improve website credibility and authority, and drive more traffic to your website. Starting a blog is a great way to provide fresh and regular content for Google to crawl and rank. Google sees fresh and consistent content as an indicator that your website is relevant, so make sure you update your blog with regular posts.
2. Add links. Internal linking (linking to other pages within your website) is valuable because it helps Google navigate your website architecture and crawl, index and rank your pages faster. External linking (linking to pages outside your website) can also be valuable when deployed in content like blogs. Externally linking to credible sources increases your own credibility in the eyes of Google.
3. Craft thoughtful metadata. When it comes to SEO, sometimes the devil is in the details. Metadata provides Google with clues to what your content is about, which in turn helps Google rank your page. The title tag is an important piece of metadata — that’s the title that appears on the search engine results page (SERP) with the blue link to your content. Make sure you include the keyword you’re trying to rank for in the title tag of a blog or web page. This helps both Google and search engine visitors know exactly what your content is about. Another important factor is to craft a title tag and meta description — that’s the text description appearing under the title tag — that’s appealing and engaging. Engaging title tags and meta descriptions will increase the click-through-rate (CTR) to your website. And along with the obvious benefit of driving more traffic to your site, a high CTR has another advantage — it can improve your search rankings! When more people click on your website, Google takes that as a sign that your site is relevant and awards it with a higher ranking.
4. Label images and media. Identify your visual and video content using alt text (alternative text). Alt text is a short textual description of your image or video. The primary value of alt text is to help Google crawl and index the image correctly. Effective alt text includes the keyword you’re trying to rank for.
5. Perform keyword research. High search engine rankings don’t add much value if you’re not ranking for the terms your ideal audience is using. You need to know what your audience is looking for at each stage of the buyer’s journey and how they’re searching for it on Google. There are multiple free and paid tools that can help guide your keyword research. Additionally, analyzing your own website metrics to determine which pages draw the most traffic is another helpful guide. If all of this sounds a little out of your comfort zone, don’t fret — a professional agency like NewGen Marketing can help you build your SEO strategy from scratch.
6. Optimize for mobile use. Today, more and more people are using their mobile phones for search, and Google is taking notice. Nowadays, Google says your content can take a real hit in the rankings if it’s not optimized for mobile-friendliness.
7. Optimize for speed. Site speed is another component of technical SEO that can affect your search engine rankings. Consumers are an impatient bunch — they’ll leave your website if the content and images load too slowly. Once Google catches wind that visitors are jumping from your site, they’ll penalize it by lowering the ranking.
Improve Search Results on Google With Guidance From NewGen Marketing
The executive team at NewGen Marketing has spent decades driving marketing and sales initiatives for industry-leading health care brands. We offer broad-spectrum marketing services, including strategy and investment, analytics, paid media, social media, remarketing, content marketing and acquisition. We rely on performance marketing strategies to measure campaign results and ensure you’re not wasting a single dollar that you’re putting into marketing spend.
Ready to hire a marketing agency who can drive more to your bottom line? Contact NewGen Marketing today for a free consultation.