Making Sure Your Business Is Found on Google
Growing your brand’s online presence is an exciting and essential job. Your website serves as a virtual extension to your business, educating and attracting visitors who may not have heard of you so far.
A major aspect of any brand’s web presence is where and how it appears on Google search results. Your website’s Google ranking for particular keywords can have a huge impact on the amount of traffic you get, and consequently, the number of interested customers knocking on your door.
To make sure your website is found on Google, take a look at the tips below.
1. Submit your website to Google
Search engines crawl the web collecting information and indexing hundreds of millions of pages every day.
While your website is likely to be discovered by Google without you doing anything in particular, you can hasten the process by submitting your site to Google through this link. By resubmitting your website every time you make a change, you inform Google about updates, making sure the latest version of your website is indexed.
For additional search engine love, submit your site to Bing.
2. Select the right keywords
Keywords are one of the main factors Google uses to analyse a website. When Google crawls your website, it takes into consideration the keywords you use for your website’s titles and text and chooses how to rank your website for these keywords.
For example, if you sell “handmade jewelry” on your website, this is a keyword you probably want to rank for. However, keep in mind that getting a good ranking for highly searched keywords can be difficult, since the competition is high.
Use Google’s Keyword Planner to find ideas for the keywords most relevant for your business and get an estimation on their search volume.
Open an account and sign into Google Adwords to access the tool. Once you’re logged in, go to Tools & Analysis, then click Keyword Planner. The keyword planner is a useful tool for learning what people search for and it can help you find relevant keywords to add to your website’s content. Try to locate the long-tail keywords. These are typically longer keyword phrases that have a lower search volume and less competition, but may be super relevant for your website’s visitors.
To stick with our example, a long-tail keyword phrase for a website that sells handmade jewelry can be “handmade wedding jewelry designs” or “unique beaded jewelry”.
Once you know which keywords you’re using, add them to your website’s titles and text. Make sure they flow naturally within the content and avoid keyword “stuffing”. Do not overuse keywords, as Google can penalise you for bad practices.
3. Optimise your meta tags
Meta titles and meta descriptions are text elements that are not visible to your website’s visitors but provide information to search engines.
When you add meta tags, keep in mind this text appears in Google’s search results and will be viewed by potential visitors, as they decide whether or not to visit your website.
4. Link your new website to your social profiles
Your existing social profiles should support the mission of spreading the word out about your website. Add your website’s link to your Facebook,Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google accounts and everywhere else you have an online presence.
After you complete this, share a status update about your website on these networks. Since search crawlers get to websites via links, you increase your chance to get discovered faster, while sending social signals to search engines, which also helps your search engine ranking.
5. Add your website to local directories
The internet allows us to get in touch with people and businesses across the globe. Still, the majority of us who go online actually search for things close to home. In fact, 1 in 3 of queries that people type into a standard Google search bar are about specific places.
To make sure your website is found on local search, list your business in top business directories for location-based marketing. Find a list of local directories in this article.
SOURCE: Wix
