Do you have the patience to scroll to page 2, 3 or 4 when carrying out a search on Google? Are you satisfied with the results presented to you on the 1st page? How do you improve your website listing on Google?
The likelihood is, you don’t spend much time looking through all the pages and you’re not alone! According to a study by Sistrix, the very first search result has a click through rate of 28.5%. This dramatically drops to 2.5% in position ten. This bottom line highlights that your ranking on Google can really affect the level of traffic to your website.
Here we explore our how to improve your website listing on Google, through SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
SEO refers to the process and actions taken to improve the ranking (listing) of a website/piece of online content. SEO is associated with organic content (you are not paying the search engine for its position).
How to do SEO?
Firstly, we need to distinguish the difference between On-Page SEO & Off-Page SEO.
On-page SEO refers to the improvements made on the website, such as:
- content
- keywords
- page titles
Off-page SEO refers to practices carried out off the website and is normally associated with credibility (like a referral/recommendation). These could influence your page ranking such as:
- back links
On page SEO practices you should be doing to improve your website listing
Google aims to provide you with the best and most relevant search results when a user inputs a query. With this in mind, to improve your website listing, its a good idea to research the keywords and search phrases that your customer would typically type in. Once you have a clear awareness of these words and phrases you can then start to write your content. Ensure that what producing answers the question or provides a solution to their query.
Quality of your content is really important!
To improve your website listing make sure you are adding value and as mentioned above, providing a solution to what the user is searching for. You can always look for inspiration to see what others are producing in terms of their content. You should never directly copy any content that you see on the internet, however, you can of course take inspiration from this, put your own spin on it and aim to produce an even better and improved quality piece of content.
Consider user intent
People use the internet for almost everything! As mentioned before, they don’t have the time or want to be looking through multiple websites to find what they are looking for. For example, if someone is looking to book a hotel in London, at that point of their journey they’re unlikely to be interested in the history of London. What we mean by this is you need to create content that responds to their user intent. So, if someone is looking to book a hotel in London you would want to make sure that they keyword/phrase ‘book a London’ is clearly evident within your content.
As mentioned previously, off-page SEO is associated with credibility. Ultimately, if you produce a good enough piece of content, hopefully other valued websites will want to include a link to your content as they perceive it to be valuable. This type of action is regarded a back link and can positively influence your rankings and improve your website listing. Just to note though, if the link is coming from a spammy source this will not benefit your website and could in fact hinder it, so don’t get any ideas about submitting your website to link building sites!
Important note:
When presented with a list of search results on Google, you will notice that some of the results have a small bold AD written next to them. You can see this in the example shown below.
These search results are paid results and are completely different to the organic search results. If you’re interested in Paid Advertising strategy you can read more here in our latest PPC blog entry.
Our team of specialists at Carrick Creative have years of experience helping many clients improve their SEO, move up the rankings and increase traffic to their websites. If you’d like a consultation to hear how our services and improve your website listing, get in touch today!