How to improve your website’s search ranking
There’s an old joke that the best place to hide a dead body is on page two of Google. In all seriousness, if you have a website, chances are that you’d love to get to that top spot of Google. But it’s becoming harder to do. Plug a search into Google and you’ll be faced with maybe 4-5 sponsored posts (Ads), a featured snippet, and a people also ask section. Depending on the search term, there could even be local results or shopping. And all that’s before you even get to the organic listings.
So what can you do about it? There are tons of SEO specialists online who share how to improve your website’s search ranking. They have in-depth technical expertise and I’m not going to step on their toes.
But, I can add to the conversation by giving you some easy quick wins and practical content tips.
Design and write websites for humans
In my opinion, this is by far the most important factor for you to consider.
Yes, we all want the Google spider to crawl and rank our website in the top spot. And yes, Google uses a whole load of ranking factors (200 is the number often used) which you can use to help.
BUT, if your website is a terrible experience for humans, nobody will want to look at it.
You know it’s true!
Think about all the websites you’ve clicked away from because the design looks outdated. Or it takes ages to load, the navigation makes it hard to find something, or the words are a pile of garbage.
So, work on the following before you even think about search engine optimisation:
Clear and up to date design
A poorly designed website which old and unloved is going to have people clicking the back button faster than a politician’s promises. Just for fun, take a look at these examples of bad websites.
Design around the user
Think about why someone is visiting your website and design around that. For example, a blog site needs to keep people browsing, a business website needs to give the information as quickly as possible.
Mobile-friendliness
Fast loading speed is crucial (less than 3 seconds). And with most of us using mobile devices to browse, it’s important to build in mobile responsiveness. Google even ranks websites by mobile-first design now.
Check your website speed here.
Ease of use
Check how easy it is for people to find their way around your website by asking someone to locate specific pieces of information. One of my clients is completely revamping their website because it was full of great information which nobody could find. By having clear navigation and internal links, you can simplify things for users.
Helpful content
Think about what people are looking for when they land on each page of your website. Then write content which is helpful, interesting, and informative. Make it enough to be useful, but not too much. Nobody can be bothered to wade through a pile of word vomit.
Make the most of links
Links are great for helping people to move around your website. For example, if you’re reading this blog post then you may also like my Search engine optimisation for beginners blog post. By giving you the link, I’m making life easy and helping you to find other relevant and helpful content.
External links are also helpful. They give context and extra detail such as examples and statistics. Some people worry about taking readers away from their website. But I've always believed it's better to be helpful. You'll see that I’ve already included relevant external links above and there will be more below.
But the holy grail is backlinks. These are where other websites link to your website - either pages or blog posts. Backlinks help to increase the domain authority of your website. Domain authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score. Moz developed it, and it has a direct impact on how search engines rank your site.
When looking for backlinks, remember not all links are the same. Your Mum's holiday blog which only family read will hold nowhere near the same clout as a relevant and respected website in your industry sector.
Links are great, but remember to check your site every so often for broken links. They're unhelpful for humans, and stop search spiders in their tracks so not good for SEO either.
Write high-quality content
When a new client asks me to write a blog post, case study, or web page, my starting point is always research. I want to know about their organisation, marketing goals, and customers or readers.
Why?
Because without that knowledge, the finished piece of work will have no context.
Knowing the audience helps me to create content which connects with them. It speaks to their needs. For example, if I’m writing a blog post aimed at small business owners, I tailor it to the questions they’ll have.
And, even though I understand how to write SEO blog posts, I always write for humans first. Later on, I can add in elements which help search spiders find and rank the content.
Learn more via my Writing and Blogging posts
So what does Google have to say?
Google’s vision is to ‘provide access to the world’s information in one click’. That means finding and ranking search results so people can get the information they want right away.
The helpful content update in August 2022 highlighted the importance of helpful, people-first content.
In plain English, they want you to write original and comprehensive information aimed at people.
E-E-A-T is important: Experience; Expertise; Authoritativeness; Trustworthiness. And whilst Google says E-E-A-T is not a specific ranking factor, it can still give more weight to your content.
And let's not forget about using AI to write your content. Here’s what Google has to say about AI-generated content. For those not wanting to click the link, here's the takeaway. Google is looking for high-quality content and E-E-A-T, regardless of human or AI generation.
There are so many more things I could talk about to improve your website’s search ranking. But I know it's easy to get overwhelmed with technical information. So my aim with this post was to give some simple tips and food for thought.
Feel free to get in touch to chat about your specific content questions.
And, if you’d like to delve a little deeper ↓
Grab a copy of my free SEO checklist for 40 simple things you can do to begin working on your search engine optimisation.