Each page should include your target keyword(s) in:
Onsite content is the single most important factor that determines rankings in organic search. When somebody searches for something in a search engine, this is known as a search query. Whether they’ve typed a phrase, such as ‘used car dealers’ or explicitly asked a question, such as ‘how did World War II begin?’, a search engine will attempt to source the best answer to these queries.
Now, suppose Google finds 2 websites that both supply answers to the latter query but website (a) answers the question with a single brief paragraph while website (b) offers a comprehensive explanation, spanning hundreds of words and provides links to various other pages that are all highly relevant to the original query. Which website do you think Google is most likely to rank in the top position? Website (b) will almost always rank higher than website (a).
The only exception to this would be if website (a) had managed to attract a considerable amount of high quality backlinks. Given the fact that high authority sites only tend to link to high quality pages, this scenario is highly unlikely, however.
The content must be well-written, relevant to the original query and be of a suitable length. It’s often considered ‘good SEO practice’ to have at least 300 words per page, but understand that there’s no such thing as too much content. You will never be penalised for having an excessive amount of copy. High quality, high quantity content is looked upon favourably by all search engines and you will be richly rewarded for it.
In the past, it was possible to manipulate your rankings simply by obtaining a large quantity of poor quality external links (backlinks). Now it’s not the case. Just as it is with onsite content, a strong emphasis is placed on the quality of your backlinks. Backlinks are most beneficial for rankings when they are from an authoritative source that is relevant to your content that they are linking to. Link diversity is also important. Multiple backlinks from the same domain are less valuable than ones that originate from different sources.
So how do you secure high quality backlinks for your website?
According to an article by Stone Temple, 56% of all internet users access the internet with a mobile device and this stat is increasing in favour of mobile, all the time. Depending on the stats retrieved for your website from Google Analytics, it may be even more skewed towards mobile than this. For this reason, it’s essential that all websites are optimised for mobile devices.
Here’s a checklist that lists the ways of best optimising your site for mobile:
HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP, which adds encryption to all data sent and received from the website you are connected to. Although mandatory for e-commerce sites, Google now recommends the adoption of HTTPS by all websites and is now a rankings factor. If your website doesn’t have HTTPS implemented but you’d like to switch over, get in touch with your web host provider.
Nobody enjoys waiting forever for pages to load and neither does Google. Slow websites affect user experience and result in higher bounce rates (bounce rate refers to the number visitors who exit your website after only viewing a single page). Loading times are now a Google rankings factor. So how can you speed up your website?
Be sure to use Google’s PageSpeed tool to measure your site’s current performance
Even if you’re unfamiliar with the term ‘Featured Snippets’ (also known as Google’s Rich Answers, Rich Answer Box), you’ve no doubt seen them countless times before. When you enter a query into Google search, the standard list of 10 organic results is displayed, but you will also sometimes see an additional result displayed at the very top of the page. This is a featured snippet.
The featured snippet includes a short answer to your original query, along with a link to the website that the snippet is sourced from. Not surprisingly, getting your website to appear as the featured snippet for a particular query can be highly lucrative.
So how do you get your website to appear in a Featured Snippet?
Whilst there’s no guaranteed method of being listed in the Featured Snippet, there are ways in which you can improve your chances:
A local citation refers to any web page that contains your business name, address and phone number (NAP). They help local residents uncover your business, learn more about your operation and are an important factor for helping your business rank in Google local search listings. Google local listings give you an extra opportunity to obtain visitors from organic search. Citations can be created by submitting your business details to local directories, industry specific sites, social media business pages and any other page that allows you to list your business details.
Where your business ranks in Google local search listings depends on a number of factors:
It’s a good idea to examine all of your existing citations and check that your business details are correct. A quick way to do this is to simply type the name of your business into a search engine and see which sites it appears on. A lot of the prominent directories will typically appear towards the top of the search listings, so you won’t have trouble inspecting your citations.
