After being invited out to Prague to speak at an ABC Practioners conference we wanted to share with you some of the advice we were giving to the audience!
The focus for the conference was to try streamline processes and help grow practises and as such, we were able to offer some words of advice on how they could improve their websites to help increase inbound enquires and leads.
We have taken this opportunity to share our advice with you too! So how do you make Google Love You?
The core focus to make Google love you should be to create and implement a Search Engine Optimisation strategy. You want to make it as easy as possible for Google to find your businesses website and this is done by ensuring you are following their guidelines to suit Google’s algorithm.
What is search engine optimisation?
One key goal for your website should be to direct people to it and increase your traffic to your website. There is no point in spending time and money on a website which nobody visits. One way in which you can do this is by ensuring you rank high on Search Engine results pages.
Ranking high on Google’s results pages can be done with 2 different strategies:
- The first is paying Google to display your ads. This is done through Google’s AdWords platform.
- The second is using non-paid methods to rank your website on Google. This is called Search Engine Optimisation and is the “organic” way to achieve results. It is worth highlighting here that the term “organic traffic” means any traffic which you have not paid to come to your website.
What are the Benefits of SEO?
- Increased traffic to your website –
By implementing an SEO strategy, you are directing more traffic to your website. This give you a better chance to introduce people to your business and establish a relationship with your target audience.
- Increased Sales –
By driving more traffic to your website you are increasing your chances of inbound leads and if you have an ecommerce website you can increase sales. It is worth highlighting here, if you have an ecommerce site in place it is vital you have optimised it for Search Engine results as this will play a key role in making it a functioning sales tool.
- Better Content –
By following Search Engine Optimisation practises you are required to provide your audience with relevant and engaging content. This is not only beneficial to ranking high on search engines but also helps you engage with your target audience. Furthermore, relevant and useful content can help you build trust with your potential clients.
- Improved User Experience
Similarly, to the above benefit, by ensuring your website is optimised to suit Google’s algorithms you need to ensure your website offers each user a great online experience. Again, this not only helps with search engine optimisation but helps to improve your website’s usability which in turn can increase lead generation and sales. An improved user-experience will help you achieve a lower bounce rate, longer sessions and a higher click through rate.
- Increase Brand Awareness
By having your website displaying on Google search pages you are exposing your business to a much wider audience. Even if they do not click on your link they are seeing your business name being associated with the thing they are searching for.
Where should I start with Search Engine Optimisation?
Keyword research should be the starting point of any SEO strategy. You need to understand what terms your clients are searching using Google. You can undergo keyword research using various different tools such as Moz, Ubersuggest, Answer the Public and even Google search results pages.
We can’t stress the importance of keyword research enough. Even though you think you know what your potential client is looking for, it might not actually be the case. Remember – you are very knowledgeable in your industry and know all the technical terms which your customer might not be using to type into Google.
What does a good keyword look like?
- High search volume
- Low difficulty to rank
- High organic click through rate (CTR)
How can I optimise a page for Search Engine Optimisation?
To ensure your website is working well for you and that Google can easily crawl through your website you want to make sure you are providing users with all the information they need. This can be done in several ways and is called “on-page optimisation”. We are getting technical here but if you are unsure of how to do these things, ask your website developer!
- Title – ensure your title is relevant and includes the keywords you want the page to rank high for.
- Meta Description – this plays a role behind the scenes of your website and is what Google will display on their search results. You need to make sure this address what the searcher is looking for as well as enticing them to click through onto your website. If you leave this blank, Google pulls the first few lines from your page which doesn’t always look good on a search result so make sure you have this set up and optimised to draw people to your website.
- URL Slug – This is the page title as displayed in the browsers address bar (e.g. my-page-title). This should match the title and content of each page.
- H1, H2, H3 – These tags are used to title each section of text on each page. It’s important to respect the title hierarchy with the most important title tag of the page being
- Image Alt Text – This is an important part of enhancing user experience as well as give you the opportunity to rank of Google “images” search results. It is also an essential aid to help those users with visual impairment who use screen readers as it offers a textual description of the image
- Anchor Text – This is the descriptive text for a hyperlink. It should clearly explain what the link is and if the link is to an external website then it should also explain that website.
How to avoid annoying Google?
Let’s get even more technical! Again, these are things you should be able to ask your web developer to check for you if you are unsure of how to implement them yourself.
- 404s – These are pages that are shown by default when a user visits a page on your website that doesn’t exist. These pages can be really useful to show offers or tunnel a user towards an enquiry form
- Duplicate Content – Avoid using the same textual content on multiple pages. It’s essential that each of your website pages has unique and useful content which matches the users search terms.
- Slow load speed – this is a big factor for a user-friendly website. You have 2 seconds to keep someone waiting until they click the back button. The main cause of a website taking too long to load is the size of the images on the site.
- txt configuration – this is a piece if code which allows you to block search engines from specific pages. This can be done for a variety of reasons but make sure it has done correctly and you are not blocking large junks of the website.
- No site map submission – Your sitemap gives Google your full website structure and lets Google easily index each page you want to rank.
By now you should have a basic understanding of how to make Google love you. Google loves a good user experience so by ensuring your website is mobile friendly, easy to navigate and updated regularly you are opening your business up to more sales or inbound leads. If you would like to arrange a 30 minute free consultation please fill in the below contact us form and someone will be in touch shortly to discuss you website.
