Google is one of the most used search engines for consumers and businesses. This means it is important for your small business to rank highly in the Google search results in order to build up your website traffic and attract more custom.
To do this, your business needs to gain authority, using relevant keywords combined with an optimised website and enticing content. As a provider of registered addresses for website owners (an essential requirement for businesses to set up their own website is to first have a registered office address), we regularly work with small businesses.
We’ve therefore put together this small business guide to Google to explain the best techniques to use in order to perform better in the search results.
Gaining authority
There are many factors that can affect a website’s authority. How authoritative your website is perceived to be is a big influence in how well your website ranks in the Google search results.
When you start out with your new business website, it will have very little authority. It’s essentially new and unproven, and for that reason Google isn’t willing to rank in highly in the search results for fear that it won’t provide the answers or experience the searcher seeks.
Authority is built up over time. A website with informative content, responsive features for all devices and links from other authoritative websites will demonstrate to Google that your business can be trusted to deliver useful resources and an answer to the searcher’s original query. Your website will grow in authority over time, and with this improved authority will come improved search rankings.
Here are some things you can do to improve your website’s authority from the start:
- Ensure your website has high quality, informative and useful content. If you haven’t already, add a blog section to your site where you can post valuable advice and information that will attract your target audience
- Promote your website around the web. If you’ve written a great guide to Google for small businesses, for example, you could approach small business websites, blogs and publications to suggest they share your guide with their audiences too
- Share your great content across social media to gain more traffic
By regularly posting great content and encouraging others to share and link to it from their own websites, you can build your website’s authority.
Targeting relevant keywords
In order to create great content which has a good chance of ranking for a particular search term, you first need to ascertain what search term (or keyword) you’d like it to rank for.
Choosing the correct keywords and phrases to target is an important part of your online marketing strategy. To get this right, you need to identify the search terms your customers and potential customers will be searching for in order to find your services.
Let’s say your business sells water coolers, for example. Your potential customers might be searching for terms like ‘water coolers’, ‘water cooling systems’, ‘watercooler refills’ and so on.
You don’t need to limit yourself to just target search terms relevant to your products or services directly. You can attract potential customers by targeting the things that are relevant to you and of interest to them beyond what you sell. For example, the water cool company may target ‘how to improve office productivity’, ‘the benefits of fresh water’, or ‘interior design for offices’.
Researching is a great way to discover alternative keywords and any competition around a possible phrase you may decide to use. Your next step is to create a page to target each keyword you’ve selected, ensuring that each page is a really great page about the term you’re targeting. By creating really relevant, really high quality content, you stand a much better chance of ranking highly for the terms that are relevant to your target audience and that will drive more, great quality traffic to your site.
Google’s mobile update
Google is always updating the rules (or algorithms) it uses to determine which websites appear where in the search results, and for which search terms.
The most recent large scale Google update pertained to mobile searchers, these being people who search on a mobile phone. Websites which are optimised for mobile-users - that work well on a mobile phone - are rewarded with a higher ranking and improved authority.
Avoiding software that isn’t common for mobile devices to have such as Flash, using text that is easily readable without zooming and placing links far enough apart so that the correct one can be selected are all elements of a mobile-friendly website. You can learn more about what makes a website mobile friendly on Google’s own guide, or test your website’s mobile-friendliness using Google’s mobile test tool.
Top tips for improving your search rankings
- Populate your site with genuinely useful, relevant and valuable content
- Identify what your potential customers are searching for an create relevant content
- Promote your website/content around the web
- Make sure your website works well on a desktop and mobile
published under Digital Marketing Guide
