We are asked all the time what are some things I can do to rank better with Google. While the answer is not as simple as we all would like there are some things that we recommend to all of our clients. We call it, Essential SEO. These are the essential things every website should be doing to rank better. If you are not doing these things, then your rankings are suffering. Call us today and we can guide you through this process and get your website ranking as high as it can.
Page Speed
Your website needs to load fast to keep your potential customers on it and one of the leading causes of abandoning a website is slow load time. Google uses several factors to determine how to rank search engine results. These factors are either related to the content of a webpage itself (text, URL, titles and headers, etc.) or were measurements of the website itself (age of the domain name, number and quality of links, etc.). However, now the speed at which someone could view your content from a search result is a signfigant factor.
Slow loading pages suffer from low user engagement (increased bounce rates, low average time on page) and Google factors this user behaviour data to influence search rankings. So users that find your page that are bouncing off a slow loading site could potentially decrease its rankings.
Using a tool like Pingdom, can help you determine what parts of your site need optimizing.
Titles and Descriptions
Title tags and meta descriptions are important elements of your website’s content. The title tag and the meta description tags should include keywords relevant to the content of the web page they describe. This helps Search Engines understand what the page is about and index your web pages accordingly for relevant keywords or keyword phrases.
When creating title tags and meta descriptions, the user is always the most important factor – not the search engine. Including keywords in your titles and descriptions is important, but you can take your titles and descriptions to the next level by considering these tags in the context of motivating a user to click, similar to an ad.
Business Verification
An important first step for any website is to claim and verify your local business’ Google My Business (GMB) listing. Getting on Google My Business can increase your chances of showing up in Google’s Local Pack, Local Finder, Google Maps, and organic rankings in general.
Additionally, over the past several months, Google has added some great features to Google My Business that companies should take advantage of that enhances your Google My Business listing and helps to grab viewers’ attention — and can increase how you rank in local search results.
Many local businesses just claim their GMB listing and forget about it. What most businesses don’t realize is that there are a variety of other features Google gives you that you can use to optimize your Google My Business listing and several reasons why you should frequently check your business listing to ensure that its accuracy stays intact.
Sitemaps
A site map is a model of a website’s content designed to help both users and search engines navigate the site. A site map can be a hierarchical list of pages (with links) organized by topic, an organization chart, or an XML document that provides instructions to search engine crawl bots.
Sitemaps are important for SEO because they make it easier for Google to find your site’s pages—this is important because Google ranks web PAGES not just websites. There is no downside of having a Sitemap and having one can improve your SEO.
SSL Certificate
Google is on a mission to reduce the chance of you visiting a site that pretends to be someone else. Malware, viruses and identity theft are a huge problem in today’s online society. By installing an SSL certificate on your website, you are letting, not only the search engines, but your website’s visitors know that you are who your website represents. Starting in July 2018, Google will begin to warn users who are visiting a website that is not secure and does not have an SSL Certificate
Google has encouraged all sites to secure visitor information with SSL Certificates. That means that whether the website collects personal information or not, Google will reward sites with SSL Certificates with a boost in search ranking.
A single-name SSL Certificate is the perfect solution for small business owners, bloggers, and for personal Websites. We encourage all of our users to purchase an SSL and we can provide those to you. Just login to your account and buy one today.
