How to rank on Google — the SEO basics you need to know
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can seem complicated and competitive, with a lot of information out there to sift through. How do you get your content found without having to get a Ph.D. from Google? Let’s talk about the very basics to get things started.
1 — Content is king
It’s always been in the best interest of search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) to figure out what people are searching for and finding the content that matches. In fact, they are constantly working on getting smarter, trying to understand how we humans speak and what we mean. Long gone are the days where you had to stuff keywords in secret places, written for a robot, with every conceivable word related to your content, just in case. What this means is that SEO has become much more attainable for non-technical people: As long you write good content that matches your client’s search, you are doing SEO!
Further, and this might seem like an obvious point, but your primary focus should be to get findable content on your website. Often we get so caught up in the poetry and presentation of marketing language, that we don’t get to the point. What does your company do? What do you offer? Search engines need to read it. It sounds awesome to say that you’re “leveraging engineering experience to enhance a modern, simple lifestyle”, and while that would totally sell me once I get there, I was searching for “bike repair”. Did you mention you were in Toronto? Or that you also sell bikes?
In other words, answer those questions you expect people to be typing into Google to find you, primarily, “What do you do?”
2 — You need a good, fast website
Google is now putting a huge emphasis on not just the content, but the experience. Again, Google wants to get its users to the right place, which means that it isn’t slow, doesn’t break just when you need it, and that the content is visible on the device you’re using. Break any of those rules and that means your website will get “dinged” by the algorithm, sending you further down on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP).
So first, you have to check your websites and see if they are being served up quickly enough. Next, you should check for any errors that might be happening, including obvious ones that you can see, but also those pesky script errors that you can’t see.
Finally, and probably most importantly today, you’ll have to check your website on a phone and a tablet. More than half of web traffic is on mobile, and Google wants to make sure your site is responsive to different screen sizes and is still a good experience. Oh yeah, and it also has to be relatively fast on a phone too.
The bad news is that fixing these things isn’t easy if you don’t have design and development skills on hand. However there are some quick(ish) fixes like upgrading your web host to make things faster, or investing in a new theme with better features if yours is a bit old. The most common thing to slow down your site is overly large images. Consider resizing and replacing them — especially for mobile.
3 — Give Google your content the way it likes it
Most search engines are great at reading and contextualizing content, but you can help them to be even more effective by structuring your content to give it a more specific meaning. This can be done using some formatting tools you probably have already when adding content to your website — e.g. headers, titles, and lists.
Specifically, you can put greater emphasis on some content by using it in headers, for example, or making it seem like a title. Google now even checks the size and format of text to determine that it’s a title and adds more emphasis to that text, so use it wisely by giving important info the prominence, with less important info avoiding too much focus. If you’re familiar with HTML tags, an H1 header should be reserved for the most important info (like your site title), while an H2 can be used for headings for page areas, then H3, H4 and H5 following that hierarchy, with your main content in paragraphs (P tags).
Next, consider using lists (bullet/number points) for anything relevant. This is how Google recognizes recipes or step-by-step instructions, for example. A great way to get found consistently is being the website that Google knows has an answer to a question people ask, so after reading your site, maybe they start sending people who ask how long to bake a pie simply because you set up your pie baking instructions in a numbered list.
4 — Don’t forget about images
Using images on your site obviously enhances the experience for visitors, but did you know images can help drive people to your site as well? Don’t miss this opportunity! Your Content Management System (CMS, e.g. WordPress) should have a spot to save images with titles, descriptions and Alt Text.
You’ll want to make sure you use these areas to properly describe your images so that when they get displayed on the website, they’ll also show that info to Search Engines. Robots are notoriously bad at figuring out images — that’s why you have to pick out street signs or flowers all over internet forms to prove that you’re not a robot. Alt Text is especially important as it is supposed to describe what is being displayed in the image, and so helps Google contextualize your content in general. Have a lot of images of bread and cakes? You might be a bakery!
But what’s also great, is that much of what makes up modern SERP are multimedia results, which includes all those great images you have on your site. You don’t want to waste the chance for visitors to click on those images!
5 — Take advantage of SEO tools and plugins
What about page titles and keywords and meta-tags and all that open graph stuff we read about that used to be so important? It’s still valuable, but usually hard to implement without some help. That’s where the plugins and helper tools come in.
If you’re running a WordPress site, for example, I’d recommend you install the Yoast plugin. It does all the heavy lifting for you and gives you tools to add information to your pages and posts that Search Engines and even social media sites will use to find and display your site properly. It also helps you decide what Search Engines can see by automatically creating and updating sitemaps, and even gives you an SEO score on your posts to let you know how you’re doing. (That’s just the free version, by the way.)
Simply install the plugin of your choosing, let it do its thing while you concentrate on creating great content (including updating all those images’ alt text).
6 — Let search engines know your website exists
Finally, an often overlooked step in the SEO process is to let the search engines know you exist. Serendipity is great for romantic comedies, but not if you’re trying to promote your website.
If you followed the last tip and installed an SEO plugin, you’ll easily have a sitemap that you can submit, which Google, Bing and Yahoo will gladly use to scan all your pages and start figuring out who needs to see it. And it works just like a map, saving the Search Engines from having to figure out where all your content is, or getting lost, missing the best attractions.
If you build it they will come
SEO can seem pretty intimidating, but hopefully learning a few of the basics will get you started and give you a better understanding of what you need, and most importantly, get your site found by those who are looking for it. Good luck, but of course please feel free to reach out to us at Rain — we are always here to help you out.
