Making Google Part Of Your Web Presence And SEO Strategy

If you want to ensure that your website is ranked highly in order to generate organic, high quality traffic, then you need to have a search engine optimization strategy.

A good way to build your strategy is to work around the algorithm that Google uses to rank websites. 

Making Google Part Of Your Web Presence And SEO Strategy

Whilst the Google SEO algorithm is always changing and adapting, there are some things that you should make sure you are doing to rank well. Once you have mastered these, you can move on to more complex SEO methods. 

Is Your Site On Google? 

The first thing you need to do is make sure that your website is listed on google. This will usually happen automatically, as Google uses web crawlers to look for new sites to add to their index. 

If your website is providing high quality content which is easy to access on various devices, and your website is secure, then it is likely to show up on google searches.

Having a website that is mobile friendly will really help when it comes to Google rankings and web presence

Navigation 

Once Google finds your site, it will look at how easy it is to navigate. The navigation should be centered around the home page, as this is where most users will start their experience.

It needs to be easy for them to get to the content that is most relevant to them, or the specific content that they are looking for. 

You should try to keep the number of ‘clicks’ required to reach content as low as possible. The more clicks needed to navigate from your homepage to the relevant content, the more likely it is that people will lose interest and not stay on your website. 

How Will Google Find Your Content? 

Google needs to be able to ‘read’ your website and quickly find relevant content to display in the search results. The best way to help google read your site is to provide a site map.

This tells Google about the layout of your site and any new content or recent changes. You should also provide an image sitemap so google can find your images as well as your written content. 

Making Google Part Of Your Web Presence And SEO Strategy

If you want the Google bots to be able to read your website easily, you need to allow them access to the relevant images and files such as Javascript.

This means that Google will be able to see your website like a normal user, helping to index your content and push you higher up the ranking. 

Page Titles

Each page of your website should have a title. This lets users and search engines like google know what the page is about. This makes it easier for users to find relevant content, and easier for Google to recommend relevant content. 

Meta Descriptions

A meta description is a brief summary of what each piece of content is about. This shows up on the Google search underneath the title of the content.

It helps users to sift through search results to find which one is going to be most relevant, and it allows Google to do the same. 

Google will sometimes use a relevant extract from the content itself instead of displaying your meta description. However, if they cannot find a snippet then it will default to showing the meta description. 

Content Optimization 

A big part of your SEO strategy is to optimize your content. This will help your rank much higher on Google searches. Your content should be good quality and reliable.

Try to stick to one topic and explore it. If your website covers too many topics then Google will not see you as an authority on anything and you will be poorly ranked. 

You will need to carry out keyword research to ensure that Google thinks your content is relevant.

There are certain keywords that perform very well on Google, and a lack of keywords will make Google think that your content is not relevant and it is not what their users are looking for. 

Targeting the right keywords is a big part of successfully improving your web presence. If you go after the same keywords as websites that are very highly ranked, then you will be out of your depth and you will not rank very highly in comparison to them.

As well as providing relevant content that includes keywords, try to provide an element of original content as well. Google likes fresh content – something new and exciting that is still relevant to your overarching topic.

It could be a case study, a report on an event, or a blog post with a new perspective. 

Authority 

Google is more likely to recommend your website to users if they think that your content is trustworthy. Google wants to know that your website is an authority on a particular subject.

This can be proven with reliable sources and trusted backlinks, regular content and consistency in topics covered. 

If you have a website about domestic animals and you start writing random content about wild animals to try and pad out your website, Google will see you as a poor authority on domestic animals because you are diversifying your content too much.

If you write about domestic animals and thoroughly explore the topics, and include some back links to relevant websites and cite veterinary studies etc, then Google will see you as an authority on the subject and will recommend your content in Google searches about domestic animals. 

Backlink Quality 

Having relevant backlinks is important for your SEO strategy if you want to perform well in Google searches. However, you should always make sure that the sites you are linking to are trustworthy.

It is worth doing some research into the domain name to see what it has been used for previously. If Google doesn’t trust your back links, this will negatively impact your ranking. 

Summary 

Using Google and their SEO algorithm as part of your SEO strategy to improve your web presence is a great idea, especially if you are just starting out. 

Justin Shaw