We live in competitive times, especially when it comes to getting people’s attention online. So, how do you make sure that your website ranks at the top of the Search Engine when users are searching for content relevant to your products and services? Let’s go through some basics of how search engines work first, then we’ll give some tips to help you.
What is SEO and how does it work?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process by which webpages are brought to the top of Search Engine Results Pages (SERP), generating organic visibility from a search query, without the use of paid advertising. Google has developed automatic algorithms that rank your site. They send out what are called “spiders” to “crawl” your site and check it for relevancy and trustworthiness. SEO is all about making sure those “spiders” are happy with what they find.
Google crawls the web looking for sites. It caches those sites, or essentially takes a “screenshot” of them. When a user enters a query, Google is actually searching its cached pages, not live sites, to produce the results. The more often your site adds content, updates pages, shows interaction, the more often Google comes back to cache your site. Try it out yourself: to see when you were last crawled, just put cache:http://www.YourDomain.com into Google and it will tell you.
Content is King
The complicated algorithms that Google uses to rank sites take many things into consideration, but quality, relevant content will always propel your site to the top. The Google “spiders” that crawl the web will look to see that you have fresh content updated on a regular basis. There are several ways to keep fresh content on your site:
- Blogs: Writing weekly blogs is a great way to be sure that fresh content is going on your site on a regular basis.
- Promotions: If you have a special rate or loan promotion going on, feature it on your home page and link it to a page with more information about the promo.
- Comb through your site: If there is old and outdated information deep in your website, trash it.
Be Social
Google has started to consider the amount of traffic you are getting on your social sites like Facebook, Instagram and more as a factor in how you rank in an internet search. They like to see interactions from your members and your site. Consider this when you’re getting social:
- How can you get more followers on your social sites?
- In what creative ways can you get your members to interact with and share your posts?
- Link back to your site whenever possible. These “trackbacks” make Google happy and lend credibility to your site.
Protect Yourself
Keeping your site secure from cyber-attack should be a priority. When you’re choosing a website platform, make sure there are security protocols available to block against such attacks. Check with your current site’s Network Administrator and ask them what steps are being taken to keep your site secure. When Google suspects that malware has been injected into your site, they will penalize you in search engine rankings. Their goal is to lead users to safe and responsible sites, so if they suspect that you’ve been hacked, you will definitely lose SEO ground.
There are many more ways to improve your rankings in the Search Engines, like using targeted keywords in your content, linking to content within your site, and use of meta descriptions and title tags, for example. If you’re interested in learning more about how your site can rank higher than the competition, PMD would love to set up a call with you to discuss strategy and offer one of our SEO packages! We’re ready when you are.