Unless you’re in a very niche market, getting found on Google can be difficult if you’re up against competitors with high marketing budgets and a high domain authority.
For your website to get you the best results you need to have high Google search rankings for relevant search terms to your business. For example, ‘website design in Norfolk’, ‘electrician near me’ or restaurants in Norwich’.
Lets face it, how many times have you gone past the first couple of pages on Google before changing your search term? It’s predicted that on average 75% of people do not venture past the first page of search results!
In this blog we’ll look at effective techniques used to improve Google search rankings, many of which I have used myself for Black Fox Marketing.
Easy – Improve your local SEO with Google My Business
If you’re a small business, targeting local search terms first is the best way to see fast results.
The first thing you want to do is to make sure you have a Google Business profile.
A Google Business Profile is a great way to boost your business’s visibility in local search engine results.
Creating a profile also allows you to provide information about your business to Google, including your hours of operation, contact information, and most importantly, a link to your website.
This information can help your business appear in more relevant searches and increase the chances of someone finding and visiting your business.
Additionally, your profile allows customers to leave reviews and ratings, which can boost your visibility in local searches even more.
Take a look at the example below when Black Fox Marketing is searched through Google. On the right hand side is the Google Business section showing key information:
By creating and optimizing a Google Business Profile, you can make sure that your business appears in local searches and help potential customers find you easily.
Take the below example, when searching ‘web designer in Norfolk’, the map listing will display results based on distance to your current location. Displaying in the map results is a huge bonus as the map results are the first results that show up on the Google search page for local searches.
Google Business profiles also allow you to collect reviews from customers or clients of your business, these reviews are important for SEO because they can help improve a website’s overall search engine rankings.
Reviews help to build trust and credibility with potential customers, and they provide valuable insights into a business’s services or products.
Reviews can also be a great way to boost a website’s overall link profile, which can help improve its ranking in search engine results.
Additionally, reviews can help increase a website’s visibility on other platforms, such as social media and local search.
Tip: encouraging your reviewer to mention key words such as your service provided, i.e. website design, will also help SEO and Google search rankings.
Easy – Submit a website sitemap to Google
A Google Sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for a website. This helps search engines like Google better crawl and index the website.
You can use Google Search Console to submit a sitemap to Google.
If you’re already on Google search page results, chances are you already have a Google Sitemap. But did you know it’s good practice to update this every time you add a new page or blog to your website?
Some external WordPress SEO plugins, such as RankMath or Yoast will automatically ping Google when a new page or blog is added, but doing this manually can cut down the time it takes for Google to crawl and index the new content.
You can also use Google Search Console to find any URLs for your website that are not indexed, as well as debug errors found.
Easy – Use local web directories to list your website on
Using local web directories can provide SEO and Google search ranking benefits by helping you to increase the visibility of your website in local search results.
Local web directories can also help to build backlinks to a website, which can help to improve its overall Google ranking in search engine results.
Additionally, local web directories can provide valuable information about a business’s services or products to potential customers, which can help to build trust and credibility.
Some web directories to consider for your business:
- Yell
- Thomson Local
- BT web directory
- Local community websites may also have a web directory for you to add your business to
Medium – Develop quality and relevant content
Quite possibly one of the most important and effective ways to improve your Google search rankings is to create high quality, engaging content which is relevant to your services.
One way to do this is by having a blog on your website. Blogs can provide your website visitors with important information relating to your service and offering.
Blogs can also be used to add fresh, valuable content to your website which target relevant keywords, this not only helps SEO but can help to improve the overall user experience.
Blogging can be a great way to engage with potential customers and build your brand.
So, what’s a good starting place for a blog? Ideally, you’ll want to target keywords relevant to your business which has high search volume.
You can use software such as Semrush or AhRefs to find out a rough estimate for how many web searches certain keywords typically get per month.
You can then use this information to build blog content around which internally links to other areas of your website, for example a quotation page or a contact form.
Tip: Creating blogs such as ‘5 ways to…’ or ‘top 10 methods to….’ is effective as it draws your audience in, as the title suggests the blog has information which is easy to digest.
Medium – Improve your website loading speed
By investing time or money for a web professional to improve your website loading times can see your Google search rankings improve as site speed is one of the core factors Google determines when ranking websites.
- Website hosting
There are many ways to improve your website load times, one of the most important is website hosting. If your website gets a lot of traffic, it would be wise to invest in your website hosting package and pick a solution which can handle lots of users at the same time.
Selecting a web host that has servers based in your country is also important as server location impacts on website loading times.
- Compress your images
Something which is quite often overlooked is image compression. Did you know you can compress your websites images by up to 10x without losing any quality by using WebP rather than JPEG or PNG?
WebP images are a modern image format developed by Google that offers superior compression, lossless and lossy, compared to other image formats such as JPEG and PNG.
WebP is designed to help webmasters reduce page load times and improve overall performance of their websites. WebP images are supported by most modern browsers, and can be used on most websites.
If your website already has hundreds of images this can be quite a daunting task, but well worth it to help improve your website loading speed.
- Use a CDN (content delivery network)
Utilising a CDN properly can help improve your website speed and by using CloudFlare there is also a free plan which provides more than enough to get started.
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a system of distributed servers that deliver webpages and other web content to users based on their geographic location.
By using a CDN, webmasters can reduce latency and improve website performance for users, as content is served from the server closest to them. Great for improving Google search rankings.
CDNs can also help to reduce bandwidth by caching static content such as images and videos.
Tip: You can also use CloudFlare’s free plan to restrict traffic from certain regions, a useful tool to reduce the amount of potential ‘bad’ traffic from countries such as Russia, China or India which has high spam rates.
Other tips to improve your Google Search Ranking
- Use a SSL certificate – it’s almost a given but some websites still don’t use an SSL certificate. SSL certificates are a digital certificate used to establish an encrypted connection between a web server and the users web browser. This ensures that all data sent between the two is encrypted and secure, especially important for websites that take payments online.
- Optimise Meta descriptions – a meta description is a short summary of a web page that is displayed in search engine results. It is used to provide a brief overview of the page’s content and should be written in a way that encourages users to click on the link. Meta descriptions should be clear, concise, and focus on the main selling points of the page.
- Use social media – social media can help website SEO by increasing the visibility of a website and the quality of its backlinks. Social media content can also help to drive more organic traffic to a website
- Generate website backlinks – backlinks are seen as a sign of trust and credibility, and the more high-quality backlinks a website has, the better its chances of appearing higher in search engine results. Consider contacting local newspapers who can feature your business on their website, as they typically have high domain authority.
Need some support with your Google Search Rankings?
Contact me now for a free consultation and SEO website audit and I’ll be able to suggest effective solutions tailored to your business website. I currently help a range of different businesses in Norfolk & Suffolk with website and SEO support.