It’s frustrating to any business when you work so hard and seem to do everything right to then lack an online presence. Many people are baffled by the ranking system Google uses and the question still remains,

“Why does my website not appear on the first page of Google?”

The answer is not simple. It does tend to point to one key area of focus for the website itself and that is S.E.O.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the name given to any activity that attempts to improve the search engine ranked position of your web pages.

By paying attention to the SEO on each page of your website you are essentially performing the basic ‘housekeeping’. This allows search engines to understand what subject each page covers so they can;

1. index it correctly

and

2. rank it amongst all the other pages on the web concerning the same subject (depending on at least 250 factors).

So how does it work?

Google assigns a rank to each page on your site (based on these 250 factors or more). In very simple terms – the more relevant and comprehensive the content is, the higher the ranking. The more pages you have on your website with high rankings, the closer you’ll get to the top listing on Google.

But it isn’t just the content that matters, it’s how your website is structured that has an impact – in other words, how your pages are linked to each other.

For example;

Here are two images representing a poor website structure (a) and a good website structure (b). Each dot represents a page on the website. The largest dot is the home page of each website. Red dots represent pages which have no links to or from other pages in the site. Green dots represent optimally linked pages.

A example of a bad website structure for Google

Website Structure (a.)

 

A example of a good website structure for Google

Website Structure (b.)

 

As you can see the poor website (a) has a lot of pages, but the structure is broken.

Regardless of how good the content is on this website, it will not rank well because the majority of the website is incorrectly structured. The search engines can see this.

Quality over quantity!

The good website (b) has far less pages but each one is linked well to other pages covering similar topics and therefore this website gains a much higher ranking than the larger, malformed website.

 

What do I have to do to improve my SEO?

Well, as we have already covered, relevance is key here. Having a website selling furniture and then pages describing what you had for your tea won’t cut it I’m afraid.

So whether its a website page or a blog post, keep it relevant to the subject you want to be found for.

Whether that’s antique garden furniture or scones and clotted cream, stick to the subject. Be thoroughly informative, include images and/or video and make it interesting.

Try to provide more than one page on a subject as this helps to boost relevance and makes a difference to your potential rankings.

For example;

Your chosen subject is ‘Scones’ so you write your main piece on that subject. Cover how to make and bake them, what to serve them with and where to buy them. Don’t digress into cookies or cakes, just stick to scones.

This should be the longest page you have on the subject – the ‘main’ scone page. Then, write another, shorter page about, let’s say.. the history of scones, then another covering regional variation of serving accompaniments. Then more and more pages covering each different flavour etc.

Make sure you have a text link from the main page to each of the subpages. Also, make sure you link back to the main page from each of the subpages.

This creates a section within your website that is self-contained and deals with one subject comprehensively. It clearly informs the search engines by the amount of content and structure that it is highly relevant to the subject.

If your not good at this then we would suggest you pay for a writer for your content as once you have this down, you then need to optimise your content!

 

Here is just a shortlist of what it takes to optimise your content –

  • Identify the search terms people use. Place them as keywords more than once (but not too often) in your article/page
  • Develop the meta description using your keyword at least once
  • Apply relevant tags and categories, helping you link pages
  • Use your keyword in the header of the main article
  • Avoid stop words and passive words
  • Create subheadings (using the keyword in some of them)
  • Use 300 words or less between each subheading
  • Create alt text for images that contain the keyword

The list goes on, but someone with experience blogging or creating content can do this swiftly. It’s often worth paying for someone to create it!

Linking other posts to your website from social media and also obtaining links from other websites “backlinks” will benefit your website’s authority and standing within the search engines algorithms.

A website with great content can get you where you need to be so don’t slack on effort in this. Just remember, a website with great organic reach (high positions in Google) means cheaper advertising due to greater exposure. It’s worth your time investment.

If you find you don’t have the knowledge, time, or patience then get in contact, our team of content writers, SEO and website specialists are on hand to help.