One of the most effective tools for marketing your business is your website. And for online businesses and app companies seeking downloads your website’s ranking is vitally important to your bottom line. These are our top recommendations to improve website ranking for your business. We begin with understanding how Google works.
How Does Google Rank Search Results?
The complex algorithmic details used by Google are secretive, but there are several important factors that we know are monitored when determining their rankings:
- Relevant content: Google’s main goal is to provide relevant information for every search query. Relevancy involves the use of keywords and high quality information about the topic of a search.
- User experience: Google desires to provide the best possible search experience for its users, which means that factors like page speed, mobile-friendliness, and overall user-friendliness are vital.
- Authority: When scanning pages Google looks for authoritative content on the search topic. Factors here include backlinks from other well-reputed sites, mentions on social media, and the quality of your website.
- Fresh content: Google values newer content on webpages and gives it a slight boost in rankings.
When your business website takes into account these critical website ranking factors, then implementing them will improve website ranking for your business. In order to do so most effectively it helps to follow some simple SEO tips for better rankings.
Simple SEO Tips for Better Rankings
We have distilled our best practices into a few simple tips to help you improve your website ranking.
Careful keyword research: By using tools like Google Keyword Planner and a variety of other keyword research tools, your business can identify high-traffic keywords that are most relevant to your business and use them throughout the content of your website as well as its metadata.
Structurally Optimize your website: Create a clear and logical structure for your website that makes navigation easy for both users and search engines. Optimize with proper heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.), internal linking, and a sitemap.
Create high-quality content: One thing Google values most is high-quality and unique content. They want information to provide maximum value for their searchers and for your audience. Write and create relevant, informative, and engaging content for your website. Make sure it is optimized for your target keywords.
Boost your website’s loading speed: Another way to improve website ranking is to ensure that your website loads quickly. There is no doubt that Google prefers fast-loading websites. By using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights you can pinpoint and fix issues that are slowing down page loading speeds.
High-quality backlinks: For Google high-quality backlinks are a sign of authority and relevance. When building backlinks make sure they are from relevant and well-respected websites within your business niche.
Engage with social media: Social media platforms are great places to promote your website, increase brand awareness, drive traffic, and build high-quality backlinks.
Be aware of Google’s algorithms: Because Google frequently updates its algorithms it is vital to stay informed about the latest evolutionary changes that will likely be website ranking factors.
Consistently implementing these simple SEO tips for better rankings and following all best practices will improve website ranking and drive more traffic to your site. But what else can you do?
Secondary Steps for How to Improve My Website’s Google Ranking
There are two additional important factors involved in how to improve my website’s google ranking. They are part of Google’s algorithms as well, but they are more personal to each business. These two factors are:
Location: Many searches are location-based; “Restaurants near me”, “Best plumbers near me”, “Best things to do in Chicago”, etc. In these cases Google will consider the user’s location and the location of the business being searched for in its rankings. This means that for best results, you need to keep your address, phone number, pictures, Google My Business information, contact information and other personal information current and accurate. This is also why getting good ratings from your customers on Yelp, Google and other business rating sites is important.
Personalization: Google also tries to personalize search results for each user based on their search history, current location, and other personal preferences. This is another reason for your website to be clear about what you sell, believe in, provide authoritative current information, know your customer and tailor your brand and website to their needs and interests.
Following these recommendations will further improve user experience and raise Google’s confidence in your business and website. But you are likely still wondering, how long does it take to rank in Google?
How Long Does it Take to Rank in Google?
It would be so great to be able to say exactly what it requires and how long it takes to rank in Google, but that varies ever so greatly depending on a vast number of factors. How far do you have to go to reach a ranking place? How much time, effort and money are you willing to give to hasten the day of ranking? Do you need to work on your website first? There are many variables. Additionally, Google recently changed its search results page format. It no longer limits the first page to 10-12 results but has stretched the first page to include up to 60 search results.
The good news of this development is that where it used to be so important to get on the first page because of how few searchers even scrolled to the second page, now that next page step is removed from the equation and people are far more likely to find your business even when it is further down the page.
The bottom line for length of time to rank high on local searches still comes back to how does google rank search results? When you begin to get a clear picture of what website ranking factors to focus on, then your SEO team can maximize the effectiveness, efficiency, backlinks and quality of content that Google loves throughout your website pages. If this process can happen rather quickly, so can the better rankings. Still it is important to consider that many businesses are trying their best to do the same thing. Which means their efforts could be slowing down the process for your business.
So how long? Good question! It will basically come down to how important it is to your business and what kind of investments you are making in SEO to follow the tips and factors that maximize your use of Google algorithms.
Conclusion
Hopefully this has been helpful for you on your SEO journey. The good thing is that you don’t have to do this alone. There are a growing number of SEO agencies who can help you. Many of them are very good at what they do.
zö SEO has a team of SEO experts with decades of experience. We can take care of everything for you or we can just do the pieces that you don’t want to do or don’t feel qualified to do. We have several package options to fit your needs as well as your budget. We get it, running a business is hard work and you want to focus on what you do best. Contact us at zo.agency and we will happily provide you with whatever information you need to make the right SEO decision for your business.
