As a small business owner, whether it's a local business or not, you'll probably be aware that having an online presence today is essential. Since around half of online shoppers use Google to do their shopping. By getting ranked up higher in the Google SERPs, you can target and gain more customers and of course get more sales. However the digital world is much more competitive today than it used to be. And just having a website up on the Internet isn't always going to be enough for your targeted audience to find you.
So how can you rank up higher and grow your small business in the Google SERPs today?
Well keep reading because you're about to find out about some proven tips that you can use to get your small business and website ranked higher up in the Google SERPS!
1: Do All The On-Page SEO Optimization
Doing on-page SEO means optimizing all of the elements on your webpages. On-page SEO is one of the best and most effective ways to increase and boost SERP rankings today. You can make use of online tools like Google's Keyword Planner Tool to identify those search terms that people are looking for. Then all you have to do is optimize the page for the following factors:
- The title tags
- The heading tags
- The meta descriptions
- The image ALT texts
- The URLs
You'll want to be sure to include your main targeted keywords spreading throughout the content. However you don't want to do this too many times as it can be seen as content spam and you don't want to be hit with one of Google's ranking penalties! You can look around at great content websites for ideas and examples of how many times to include your keywords within your content.
You'll want to make sure that the other on-page elements are also optimized for your main keywords too, making sure to use relevant keywords to it will also help it to rank higher for them as well. And you'll also need to optimize all your other on-page elements too for every other page on your site so that you can improve its overall relevance in the Search Engines.
2: Always Publish High Quality, Engaging Content
Running and maintaining a good blog on your site is very important for ranking high in the SERPs. We all know that Google wants to provide its searchers with the most relevant results. So posting high quality, engaging content to your blog and optimizing the posts will help to increase your visibility in the SERPs. It can also help your site to get indexed and ranked for even more of your targeted keywords.
But you'll need to create blog content that's highly engaging if you want it to rank high in Google and other search engines. That means going the extra mile to make sure that your content delivers. You can find good examples of this online by searching for things in Google that show results that are website's blog pages ranking high for it.
But what should you write about on your blog exactly? You should first begin by identifying those questions that your targeted audience are asking the most. You can use sites like Quora for that. Just type in your targeted keywords and find questions that people are asking around those keywords. Another good tip is to do the same in Google and look at the People also ask section to get more ideas.
3: Add LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) Keywords to Your Pages
By adding LSI keywords to your content, you can not only improve the relevance of your content but rank up for even more keywords also. LSI keywords are those search terms and phrases that semantically relate to the content itself. Basically, they help Google to understand the context of your web pages. Let's say for example you have a web page that talks about Apple. Google will know that you mean the company and not the fruit by using terms after it such as iPhone or tablet etc.
You can find LSI keywords by just searching in Google and looking at the results at the bottom of the page. Or just click through on to some of the results at the top and then take note of any common keywords and search phrases that show up. You'll want to also add the keywords that your target audience is searching for too. All you have to do is find them and you can do it very easily by just using Google searches for it.
4: Refresh and Reimagine Your Existing Content
Google always likes fresh content that much is a given! This does make a lot of sense based on what it is you're searching in Google for. Of course, you want information that is relevant today when you search for something yourself. But even if you've already got well researched and well written content on your site, its rankings can start to go down over time as it becomes less relevant. Other website's pages might even outrank yours just because theirs is more recent.
So you should refresh your older, existing blog content articles with newer, fresher more updated and more relevant SEO content so that it gives them more of a chance of ranking higher in the search engines. You should start first with the content on your blog that is ranking lowest first or the content that is only showing up in the second pages of Google.
All they may need is a gentle nudge by refreshing them to have them ranking higher again. So just go through all of that content and then improve upon it and make it better than it was before. You can find lots of ways to refresh and improve old content including updating old statistics that aren't accurate anymore. Also adding in new multimedia like images, photos or videos. Or simply just optimizing it for other keywords or even adding in new sections to it.
5: Get Guest Posting on Other Blogs in Your Niche
By now anyone that owns a website or a blog knows what guest posting is! It's simply the art of getting your content published on other blogs that link back to yours. This has many beneficial purposes to it. One of those benefits is that it can generate referral traffic back to your site. Getting your content published on well known websites within your site's industry can help you to gain more traffic and customers.
The other benefit is that it naturally boosts your link building efforts. Backlinks play a crucial role in where your website ranks in the Google SERPs. And guest posting can help with those efforts as they help to build a backlink to your website in the process. This can help to build up authority to your website both in the eyes of people and Google alike.
You can find many sites that will accept your content as a guest post. Just do a Google search for something like "write for us" and your keywords after or before it and it should return hundreds if not thousands of results of blogs and sites that accept guest posts and let you have a backlink to your site within the guest post too. You'll find many sites that let you submit guest post content. Not all of them allow you to use links in the content though. And you'll want to try and limit them to sites that are in your niche.
6: Build Better Backlinks to Your Site
I think this is a subject that we've probably covered here before, but it's worth mentioning again. Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors of them all that decide where and how your site ranks in the SERPs today. Backlinks are basically seen like a vote of confidence for your website. And the premise is, the more you have, the better they signal to Google that other sites are voting for yours. So to boost your rankings in Google, including your homepage and internal pages also, you will want to build backlinks to both your homepage and your internal pages too.
5 Strategies You Can Use to Build Better Backlinks
Do Diligent Outreach: You can reach out to other sites in your niche and industry and request that they link back to you. This wont always work on its own and make take some persuasion. Not all sites will want to do it for nothing. So consider offering something in exchange for a link back to you such as writing for them or even linking out to them.
Repurpose Old Content: One of the best ways to put old content to good use is to use it to generate backlinks with is by repurposing it into other formats. This could include things like turning it into a video or social media posts and even infographics etc. Just make sure you have a strategy that optimizes your content planning, including its delivery and redistribution.
Search Out Resource Pages: Resource pages usually provide very helpful titbits of information about a particular subject or topic at hand. Resource pages are a great way for you to get high quality backlinks to your website. Just reach out to them and request that they include a link back to your website in them since it pertains to, is helpful for and is relevant to the subject itself.
Claim Any Unlinked Mentions: There may be times when a website mentions your products or even its brand, but they don't link back to you. You can look up and search out your brand name and products etc and look for places where they have mentioned it but have not added a link back to you. So just kindly request that they add a backlink to your site or the product they mention.
Research and Copy Your Competitors: You should analyse and then compare your competitors link profiles and and aim to replicate and copy any nice backlinks they have. Sure, building backlinks can seem like quite a daunting and tedious affair, but the rewards are good and worth doing. You can use free link building tools and software to help you manage it and make it much more effective as you go into doing it.
7: Always Track Your Rankings
If you apply the tips and techniques mentioned in this article then you should inevitably start to see your website's rankings improving in the SERPs. You ought to also see more organic traffic coming into your site as a result of it all. However, it can take weeks, months even for you to see those rankings improve.
So how can you know if all of your link building efforts are paying off for you? You can find and use some kind of SEO rank tracking software or website that keeps track of your rankings for you. Using such a tool can be very helpful as it lets you see where your website is ranking for your targeted keywords.
Conclusion
Google is the number 1 search engine of them all. And they have a lot of algorithms and methods they use to score and rank websites in the SERPs. By doing this kind of SEO on your website, you can see positive improvements from it all. Which would likely mean more organic traffic and customers coming into your site. Just be sure to follow the methods outlined in this article to gain more traffic from Google. Be sure to optimize all of your pages and only publish high quality content. Whether it's on your own or other sites. And don't forget to keep track of your rankings so you can see how much your hard work is paying off!
Author: IdealMike
Main Service: 50 Million Group Advertising
