Do you need to figure out how to get your website on Google? You’re not alone––anyone who does significant business on the web is asking this same question. Ranking on Google can make or break a business, especially at a time when so many businesses are shifting to remote delivery and online sales.
You Can’t Ignore Google’s Importance
Google is the go-to search engine for the vast majority of the market. Of the 3.5 billion worldwide searches that take place on a daily basis, only 1.9% happen on Yahoo! 2.8% go through Bing. Google, meanwhile, gets 91.9% of all searches on the planet.
With numbers like that, it’s no surprise that Google is the savvy marketer’s gold standard for SEO. Perhaps your business ranks high for some Google searches, but not as many as you want. How do you improve your situation? Should you buy ads? Should you overhaul your website? What is the best way to boost your position?
How to Get Your Website on Google––Top 3 Methods
Google Ads
Google will be happy to take your money if you want to purchase Google Ads (formerly Adwords). There has been a lot of debate about whether Google Ads or Facebook Ads offer a better ROI, but if your goal is showing up on Google searches, it makes sense to focus on the search engine.
Still, consumer trust in ads has been on a steady decline for years. Over half of searchers report using ad blockers, and ads require a significant investment in order to catch on.
On-Page Optimization
You can also use SEO and put keywords directly onto your main page. Hopefully, you’re doing some of this already, however, this by itself is not going to be enough. You don’t want to crowd your home page with a lot of text, but in order to help your odds of ranking high on Google, you’ll need to rank for multiple types of searches.
SEO-Driven Content Creation
The secret of how to get your website on Google isn’t complicated. The best way is to do it with carefully-managed, SEO-driven content.
Essentially, this means blogging, but not just any type of blogging. There are millions of blogs floating around on the internet, with a new post being added every half-second. Most of these will never rank high on a significant Google search because they haven’t been properly optimized.
SEO-driven blogs are different. They are researched and targeted with the specific goal of ranking high on Google’s searches, and there are a few key ways to help make that happen.
The 5 Keys to Effective SEO
#1 – SEO Should Target Ideal Customers
The first rule of effective SEO is to remember who you’re writing it for. For the sake of illustration, let’s imagine that you run a used car dealership. You want to sell more cars, make more money, and grow your business, so you investigate how to bring new traffic to your website.
Don’t Pursue Every Customer
You might run a search report on your website and see that a few people found your site last year because they were searching Google for a specific 2019 model: but you no longer have that car in stock. Furthermore, you aren’t likely to get more of that particular car any time soon. Does it make sense to try to boost your rankings for that specific car and advertise a product you can’t sell?
Of course it doesn’t! You want to focus on what you have the capacity to sell today and pursue customers who want to buy that exact product.
Imagine the Search an Ideal Customer Would Make
You do this by imagining your ideal customers. What do they want? Then figure out what someone will type into Google when they are looking to buy what you have to sell. You can also do some research if you have the right software. There’s a bit of creativity involved as well as a decent amount of data analysis.
You also want to make sure that people who conduct the search are thinking about buying the car rather than searching for other reasons. If the search is for “2019 toyota prius engine repair,” and you are a dealership without a service department, then this might be an SEO topic to leave alone. These searchers aren’t looking to buy a car. They’re looking to fix a car they already own.
Consider Search Intent
This approach to SEO is known as examining a user’s “search intent.” It means that you put yourself in the place of the customer you want to attract. The great thing about this approach is that it can pay off enormously because your efforts make you rank higher for people who already want what you’re selling. When done properly, this kind of marketing can be eight times as effective as traditional outbound marketing like mailers, radio ads, or TV spots.
#2 – SEO Should Be Specific
SEO is based largely on the use of keywords. These are particular words or phrases that exist on your page or blog. They help Google archive different websites. If your business uses the phrase “used car dealership” several times throughout the blog or site, Google will conclude that this is relevant to your business, and help direct traffic that is searching that phrase.
Diversifying your keywords is one of the best ways to increase your website traffic. After all, not all customers enter exactly the same phrases when they are searching the web. Some might type in “used car dealership,” but others will type the make and model of a specific car they are looking for. Others may add a desired price, such as “used prius under $13000.”
Knowing these habits can help your business rank for more specific and more targeted searches. It’s true that a lot more searchers are typing the phrase “used car” than “used prius under $13000,” but if you have some of these cars to sell, then ranking high for a targeted search can actually be more helpful for your bottom line.
#3 – SEO Should Be Relevant to Your Location
Another tactic that can lead to great results for SEO is using a geographic tag. If you’re running your dealership in a specific area, Google will often identify the user’s area and suggest locations near to them. However, many people still type their location into a Google search, especially on their home computers. You can help raise the profile of your business when you take location into consideration and include it in your content and your titles.
#4 – SEO Should Be Used Naturally and Conservatively
Another key to SEO is a bit more subtle. We can talk about the advantage of specific keyword phrases, but sometimes these are difficult to fold into a blog post. A phrase may be very particular, as with the example “used prius under $13000”. That’s a phrase that will help Google identify your content, but a human reader may find it strange if it pops up too many times in one post.
Good SEO writers will find ways to make their content easy to read. They also know that packing their posts too full of keywords (a tactic known as “keyword stuffing”) will actually harm the quality of their ranking. If you are creating SEO content for a specific keyword, don’t overdo it.
#5 – SEO-Driven Posts Should Be Kept Current
This is another explanation for the particular popularity of blogging. Google identifies keywords when ranking available content, but that’s not the only thing it looks at. It also keeps in mind the date of the post and whether or not any edits have been made.
Google is in the business of providing relevant search answers to its users. If users are looking for where they can buy a used Prius and are led to commercial posts that are five years out of date, then they will probably be disappointed. Google knows this and steers customers away from sites that are too old.
Google places a high premium on fresh content. That means that your main web pages get an occasional update. In particular, it means that there should be something new that catches Google’s attention. Blogging is popular because it’s an easy and streamlined way to do this––you can “refresh” your content on a weekly basis without having to redesign the rest of your site.
How to Get Your Website on Google With SteadyContent
At SteadyContent, we specialize in the creation of quality SEO-driven blog content and have been in the business since 2010. Our posts are designed to engage both Google and the reader. We deliver relevant information for the customer with tech-savvy. A pool of over 500 writers has helped us create a high volume of monthly or weekly content for hundreds of businesses, and our clients come from all over the globe and work in a wide range of industries.
If you’re interested in getting your website to rank high on Google, we can help you do just that! We are currently running a special trial promotion, allowing new clients to test our content for just $1. Get in touch with us today and see the difference SteadyContent can make!
Great article! Needless to say this also helps with the notso popular search engines such as Yahoo, and Bing.