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Part 2 of 2

Welcome back! In this second part of getting ranked higher by Google we are going to examine the other 3 factors that can influence where your website stands in the ranking.

They all inform the authoritative nature of your website, along with how trustworthy it is as well making sure that it is relevant.

Let’s re-cap…

So far we have look at page title descriptions, the actual text on a page, as well as the relevant SEO keywords being in the page URL. The remaining three factors look at links.

Links according to Google

Rather than being a little slapdash and shoving in links where you feel like it, think about how Google views a link.

Links, in the all-seeing eyes of Google, are votes for your website – in other words, it is popular and relevant.

F-a-b-u-l-o-u-s you may say, and go back to shoving links in but STOP… just for a moment and consider how you are using these links, as well as other considerations, such as…

Certain links are considered more authoritative than others and will look better in the eyes of Google if the originating link is from a website that Google already ranks quite highly.

*Here at Locally, in our blog posts we use links; however, we rarely use more than 3 in a longer blog post and always check that a. the website we are linking to is relevant and b. it is an authoritative one. We like websites that complement our business, as well as the topic we are blogging about. We always use the links within the main body of the blog article too*

Google PageRank is the name of the algorithm that sorts the wheat from the chafe in terms of whether links are any good or not. Don’t confuse this with a websites’ Page Rank, Google used to publish Page Ranks but these haven’t been updated for a long while, so now you’ll have to find other ways of working out how authoritative Google thinks a site is. Most SEO’s go on either MOZ’s SEO Explorer Domain Authority or Majestic’s Trust Flow versus Citation, but as neither are Google, these are informed guesses rather than definitive.

In terms of links, don’t overstuff and don’t use ones from less-than-salubrious sources. You have been warned.

And so 2 of the remaining factors that can influence where your page comes in the rankings of Google are all to do with links, with the final one looking at filters.

Number 4: Domain Links

This is about links on other websites that link to your websites; so in other words, someone writing about SEO and Google rankings in the future might find this post and think ‘wow!’, and copy and paste the web page URL in to their website. We would be chuffed as it means that Locally’s website is gaining in authority in the eyes of Google.

Links help your online reputation and so if you can get a link from another relevant, authoritative website then all the better. BUT, do not fall in the trap of buying links as Google takes a very, very dim view of this and rubbish links could actually be harming your page ranking.

In the past the SEO industry was nearly 100% focussed on generating links and much of those were dubious if not downright spammy. Google has pretty much killed of that ‘quick win’ approach. Today any SEO offering you 50,000 backlinks and instant success, a technique that worked a few years ago, is likely to seriously damage your rankling today.

Google had realised that websites that were stuffing themselves full of shoddy links were outstripping websites that were more genuine in their approach to commerce. And so a filter was ‘switched on’, if you like, that started to look for websites that were simply using any old link… so beware the backlinks, the link farms and all those other ‘get rich quick’ types of schemes. It can be very difficult to bounce back from being penalised by Google.

In fact the best way to handle links is actually not to try and earn them, but instead write authoritative content and get is out there by social or any other means. If your content is good, people will link to it.

Number 5: Page specific links

You can form links within your own website too and this can also help in terms of website being seen as relevant, authoritative and trustworthy in the eyes of Google. Your home page may be the landing page that people find, but if you want them to bob along to your blog, put a link on your home page. Keep these links running down the side of your page too and, if you have an active page specifically for a certain time of year, then link this page to other pages in your website.

This is seen as helping the customer to navigate your site; customers like this as it is an easy way to get around and make a purchase. They will buy more… and you can see where this is going!

Number 6: Quality filters

The Google Panda update at the start of 2014 was all about improving the user experience on the search engine, in other words, improving the quality of the search results that user would see. One area that it choose to look at was the user experience of a website; how easy is your website to use?

Two factors of usability were previously not heavily on the SEO radar, but now are becoming increasing important

Performance. Sites that respond quickly are easier to use, so that is a significant usability signal. Bad code, unoptimised images and slow servers are things that need to be addressed.
Multi-device friendly. Today websites are visited from phones & tablets as well as desktops. Infact many sites have 50% of their traffic from mobile devices. Google is now looking and analysing how multi device friendly your site is. If your site is not currently responsive, now is a good time to make a small investment to make it so.

What about social media signals?

Social signals as they are known, is when a customer or user likes, shares, tweets, G+’s, pins etc. content or pages from your website.

If you surf the web, you will find a range of conflicting advice and opinion about how much social signals do or do not play in ranking your website, in both Google and other search engines. However, if you look at your competitors, as well as other popular websites, you will see that they have high counts in terms of shares, tweets and G+’s and the like.

You can see them as links in some ways, but those that say social signals should be used with caution point to the fact that some of these likes and shares etc. can be fabricated or bought. And just like spammy links, buying hundreds if not thousands of likes or shares can be to your detriment.

See social signals in the same way as links; invite people to genuinely like and share things on your website.

Put it in to practice!

Armed with the knowledge of the 6 factors that could make a very big difference to your website ranking you know need to do two things:

Take a look at your competitor sites that are ranking higher than yours – what are they doing, that you are not? What can you emulate and improve on?
Look at the 6 factors again and then look at your website – is your website up to scratch?

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Part 1 of 2

Is it your ‘dream’ that when potential customers search for a product or service that you offer, that on page 1 of the search engine listings, your business ranks up there with other great companies?

It is not a pipe dream; it can be a reality BUT, you need to be focused and committed – and you also need to be doing the right things, from setting your pages up correctly, to telling the search engines you exist to then staying committed, constantly pushing your website so that it looks and ‘feels’ authoritative and trustworthy.

In this first part of a two part mini-series, here at Locally we take a look at how online, local businesses can figure in those top spots on page 1, starting with understanding the ranking equation used by one of the major search engines, Google.

Why Google?

It is huge. Gargantuan. It has the lion’s share of the search engine market (up to 90% according to some estimates). With 2 billion Internet users worldwide, it is probably not unrealistic to estimate that half of these will use Google as either their preferred or default search engine. It would be silly, almost the kiss of death to ignore Google, there are other search engines out there. However, for the purpose of this Locally Mini-Series, we will focus on Google.

In a nutshell

To understand how to win the coveted crown for a ‘Page 1 Top Spot’, you need to understand two things:

How Google’s algorithm works – what it uses to rank pages
Understand why your competitors are ranking higher than you, at that particular time.

Google’s algorithm

Ah yes, just like algebra at school, we can see your eyelids getting heavy as you prepare for a mid-afternoon nap but now is not the time.

First thing’s first; apart from the very top executives at Google, no one really knows all the secrets, twists and turns that this search engine uses to create its magic page 1 list but, there are some highly intelligent technically minded people who have a fairly decent idea of how the algorithm crunches number and data.

But, don’t forget that this algorithm also changes over time, so what was working this time last year, might not be delivering the results now. This way, the web is kept vibrant and fresh.

Walking in Google’s shoes – try and see what it sees

Basically what we are saying is this: when a customer searches for something on the Internet using its browser, they want to see results that are accurate. We all know the frustration of surfing for information on something specific, only to find that what we get is some tripe from a far off place that makes no sense.

And so, you need to see what Google will see when it takes a look at your website – think relevance, popularity and quality. If people are buying from or using a website, it must be offering something worth having. It must offer a worthwhile buying experience, and customers must be happy with it. Hence, to Google, that website looks a fairly good one, so they move it up the rankings…

Simple?

In that case, your website needs to show good it is relevant, popular and offers high quality experience, such as an authoritative blog or news section, along with FAQs and the like. In this way, customers may also be reviewing your products or services, liking your page, enjoying your tweets and just generally in conversation with you.

Google says that it has 200 variable factors that it uses to rank websites but, there are some things that can be done that will help you website climb the slippery pole on to page 1 – and stay there.

So sharpen your elbows, because here are 6 factors that can influence your ranking with Google (yes, only 6… but they are important).

The Locally Whistle Stop Tour of 6 Things You Can Do To Get a Higher Ranking with Google (might work with other search engines too!)

Tickets please! Now fasten your seat belts and let’s look at the first 3 of these factors (the remaining 3 will be addressed in Part 2 of this blog post… due for publication on the Locally blog on Wednesday 5th November)

Number 1: Page Titles

This matters because it is a description of what the page is about. It must be accurate and at least 3 words long. So, in your page if you are targeting a particular keyword or phrase, then this should be included in your page title and in the right order.

E.g. if your home page keywords were ‘local (and) online personalised gifts (for) sailors’ then you would use this in the page title html description.

The (and) and (for) are in brackets to highlight that they are STOP words. These are words that Google does not count in its searches, simply because you would have all sorts of weird and wonderful results. There are literally hundreds more stop words…

Number 2: Page text

Search engines read words quickly and easily, but like the stop words from above, they don’t bother with the connective words, instead they look for the important ones, if you like; the more times the word or phrase pops up in the page, Google assumes that is what the page is about.

Hence, if you want people to find you product or service because your business offers flexible website design for local online businesses, then this phrase would be used maybe two or three times, and other keywords or phrases that relate to this.

In other words, the page is relevant.

Over-stuffing – we think over-stuffing should be a word entered in the dictionary, a bit like oversharing. In any given 500 words, do not over-use your keyword or phrase – use it, at most, 5 times, but 3 or 4 will do just fine, or actually once may be enough. Over-using a phrase will make your text look artificial; it won’t look like to a eyes of a real person, and neither will it look right to Google (or any search engine).

Number 3: keywords in the URL

You also have control over whether these keywords appear in the page URL or not (not sure about URLs – check this out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxu7eZrPUyQ)

It can really help if your keywords are in the order that a person searching for something like your product or service would type them in; this is a little SEO tip which is why this blog post is called ‘getting ranked higher by Google’ because you never know, someone out there may be frustrated that their competitors are on page one and want to how they can be too…

In summary

We have covered three factors that we can directly influence how Google sees a website in terms of being relevant, authoritative and trustworthy and they are:

Page titles
Page text
Keywords in the URL of a page

page 1 rankings