The start of a new year offers a great opportunity for businesses to implement or enhance their marketing strategy. With this in mind, here’s our checklist to help increase your business’s Google rankings in 2018.
Ensure all your website’s pages can be found by Google
It’s important that you ensure at all pages can be crawled and parsed by Googlebot spiders. Ensure that any page content is in a text readable format and that any images, videos or any other elements are in a format which allows Google to add them to their search index.
Research your important Keywords
You should draw-up a list of keywords that are important to your business and other keywords your potential customers are using to search for your products or services. Research the search volumes and the competition so you know what you are up against. In addition to the obvious keywords, don’t forget about the long-tail-keywords – these might attract fewer monthly searches but might also be less competed for.
Check your SERP in Google
Once you know what the important search keywords are for your business and have a good understanding of search volumes and relative competition, you need to check your current ranking (SERP) in Google to see how you are currently doing.
Set-up a credible team to create content (they’ll also need to have a good technical understanding) which is going to meet your keyword goals.
It’s also important to ensure your web content is the best that it can be for the typical searches that are being made by people looking for your kind of business. You need to make your website and its landing pages look more credible both in the eyes of Google, as well as the eyes of searchers and website visitors. The ultimate aim is to try to deliver a goal for the person looking for a solution to the question they are asking in Google. If your website, webpage and business messages deliver the information, answer, product or service that a searcher is looking for, you are much more likely to gain new customers from your search marketing efforts.
Get technical and look at your meta data
When determining where to rank your business in search results, Google looks at hundreds of technical elements within a website. Not all technical factors have equal weighting so it’s important to have a good understanding of the ones that will make the greatest impact to your website and to focus upon those first. Ensure that meta data is optimised, along with page titles, title tags, rich snippets, SSL certificate etc (not necessarily in that order!).
Optimise pages so they load as fast as possible and look stunning
Look at your Google Page Speed score and try to squeeze things as much as possible to increase your score. Even an increase of a few percent can sometimes push you higher than your competitors. You’ll also need to present a great user experience when a visitor finds your website. Ensure that the UI works well, that your site looks great (and works well) on mobile and that your website is HTTPS. HTTPS (or SSL) has had a big emphasis put upon it in 2017 and is set to be even more important in 2018.
Keep going and don’t stop
For search engine optimisation to really work for a business you need to keep going. Keep reviewing your primary, secondary and related keywords and experiment over time. Don’t take your eye of the ball because your website sits in an ever evolving playing field. Changes to the Google ranking algorithm, your competitor’s online strategy and customer search habits evolve month by month.
Article provided by Gareth Lisle from Bluehoop Digital.
About Bluehoop Digital
Bluehoop Digital work in close partnership with their clients to provide a range of website and digital marketing solutions. With a proven track record for helping clients understand and meet their commercial objectives, Bluehoop work hard to develop an online presence that increases revenues and stimulates success. Bluehoop’s services include digital marketing, search engine optimisation, web design and development, email marketing and social media.
Operating from their base in West Yorkshire, Bluehoop Digital work with a wide range of clients in Yorkshire, throughout the UK and overseas. Formed in 2012, Bluehoop Digital has gone from strength and strength and now boasts a growing, dynamic team.
For further information or help with your online marketing strategy please visit contact Bluehoop Digital on 01943 968262 or visit www.bluehoop.co.uk
