Whether you create your own website or hire a web developer to build one for your business, launching your site online is just the start of the journey. Sure, you might have the most visually stunning website that cost a fortune to build, but if people can’t easily find it online then what was the point?
In order to help your website get noticed, you need to be actively driving traffic to it and making people aware of its existence. You’ve put all the hard work into getting it to look just right so why wouldn’t you spend a little more time improving its ranking and making it more visible online?
Here are some tips for making your website more visible online:
#1 – Content
Updating your website with fresh, relevant information that fully satisfies a searchers intent is a great way of improving your ranking and reach. Google only serves the most relevant content to ensure the best user experience and that they continue to meet searchers expectations.
Ask yourself what questions would people typically ask about your product or service and write to satisfy that query.
#2 – Set Up An Effective Linking Structure
Adding relevant links both internally and externally can help to boost your ranking in search engines. By adding links to pages and posts within your site, search engines can more easily read how pages are related to each other and in what ways. Search engines also analyse the popularity of sites based on the number of pages linking to them and determine metrics like trust, authority and spam based on these links.
Create an informative company blog, request links from business partners and other relevant businesses, partner up with a local influencer, list your business on local business directories. These are just some ways to kick-start your link building campaign.
#3 – On-Page SEO
Ensure all of the main pages of your website are fully optimised for SEO. Keywords should be placed in page titles, page URLs, H1 & H2 titles, image alt attributes and throughout the actual content.
Don’t go overboard with trying to stuff your keywords everywhere and anywhere. Apply synonyms where appropriate and make sure it reads well. Remember, it’s not just the search engine’s attention you are trying to capture here but that of real people.
#4 – Speed & Responsiveness
What is more annoying than a site that takes ages to load or one that just doesn’t look right on mobile? You have 3 seconds before someone will typically click away from your still loading site. Maybe your speed is just fine but if your website is not mobile responsive and content is not displaying right, you risk losing a lot of potential customers.
You can try a free tool like Pingdom Tools to test the speed of your website. To check the responsiveness of your site and how it looks on different platforms, try Responsive Design Checker.
#5 – Online Reviews
Most people these days seek out reviews and testimonials before making a purchase online. Reviews build trust and reassurance and Google takes this into consideration when ranking your website. If you haven’t already, set up your Google My Business page and request a review from any previous and satisfied customers by referring them to this page. Not only will this improve your ranking but your business will also be displayed in Google maps, increasing your visibility in search engines.
Set up your Google My Business page here then copy the URL of your reviews page and send it as a link to customers to complete a review.
#6 – Rich Snippets
Snippets are the lines of text shown when you search for something on Google. Although this doesn’t directly impact your ranking position, rich snippets are known to have encouraged customers to click through to sites above higher ranking ones. Choose this text carefully, calling out to your ideal customer and selling the benefits of your products or services.
If you have a WordPress website, you can use the free plugin Yoast SEO to edit your snippet information. Simply go to your dashboard in WordPress – Plugins – Add New – Select Yoast SEO – Activate.
Conclusion
By adopting the above strategies and taking onboard my suggestions, you should start to enjoy better search rankings and more traffic to your website. If you would like some help with any of the above, just get in touch. I’ll be happy to do the work for you or talk you through it.
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