Did you know that less than 3% of people who search online make it to the second page of search results?
With that kind of statistic, it’s understandable why most business owners want to get to the top of organic search results. But getting to the top isn’t so easy…
In order for your website to rank for specific landing pages in general, you need to put a decent effort into Search Engine Optimisation, both technical and content-based.
Understanding SEO
SEO is the process of increasing the visibility of a website, on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) through un-paid results. So, it takes a lot of work, patience and a fair understanding to produce the best results, especially first page results!
Firstly, you have to make sure that your website has been built to be SEO friendly. (There’s a lot to this, so here’s a fantastic article you can follow to ensure this vital first step is done correctly).
Keyword research & identifying your search terms
The focus keywords need to be narrowed down and chosen wisely. If you go for terms which are too competitive or terms which don’t generate enough traffic, then it’s not worth the effort.
Using tools like Google Search Console will help you identify what current search terms your ranking for already. If you can build content around them terms then you’re pretty much smooth sailing! Just remember not all search terms may be relevant, so try and focus on the relevancy, the competition and the volume of traffic they bring through.
Optimising the web pages for crawl-ability (on-page SEO)
- Page title
- Meta description
- H1 & H2
- Paragraphs
- Alt text (even pictures need SEO)
- Keyword within the 1st paragraph of content
By doing this you’re giving the search engine a structured piece of HTML for it to crawl and read through the content you’re putting into it! Think of this as the web pages skeleton.
Internal linking
Internally linking back to your own website, specifically back to the pages you want to rank for shows google what the most important page is. You can easily do this by ensuring every page has some form of a CTA.
Backlinking (off-page SEO)
The search engine will use backlinks as indications of the content’s quality, so a site which contains high-value backlinks will typically rank better than one without.
Blogging
Keep uploading content constantly throughout your website, even if it’s just 1 blog per month a little can go a long way! – Especially for question-based blogs.
Example
You’re a masseuse business wanting to rank for terms such as “back massage/back massage London”, “massage services” and maybe “Spa neck message”.
Then you might want to consider writing question-based blogs such as “What are the benefits of back massages?”, “How often should I get a massage?” and “What to expect when getting a massage?”.
Blogs like this can help your keywords rank better for a number of reasons:
- Question based blogs are going to answer question-based searches, people who looking for their questions to be answered are likely to be very interested around that particular product or service
- Internal linking back to the service page with CTAs at the bottoms
- Constant use of your keywords imputed throughout blog content
- You’re more likely to get a featured snippet through Google (Featured snippets aim at answering the user’s question right away and are typically found on top of Google’s organic results!)
These are just a few ways to help your website rank organically in search engine results!
For more information on SEO take a look at some of our other blogs “How long does SEO take” or “How to optimise blogs for SEO”.
If you’d like to know how a marketing agency can help your business scale in 2020, through a range of marketing services (including SEO!) book onto one of our free strategy workshops ??
