You've made a fantastic website for your business. You've filled it with nice product pages, great articles, and attractive images that make your products look incredible. There's just one problem: people aren't coming to the website. What's going on?
It's likely that your new website simply isn't showing up high on Google search results.
93% of online experiences begin with a search engine and 91.4% of those search engine queries are specifically submitted to Google.
Unfortunately, this means that if your website doesn't rank highly on Google's search results, few people will see it. 68% of traffic goes to the first five search results displayed on Google. If your site is only showing up on a later page or doesn't appear in Google's index at all, this might be why your traffic is currently limited.
The good news is that there are many ways that you can optimise your website to have better visibility on Google. These include making sure Google can crawl your new pages by submitting a sitemap for indexing, optimising content and metadata, link building, and much more.
So, here are 8 tried and tested Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tips to give your site the visibility boost it deserves.
1. Submit your sitemap to the Google Index
If yours is a new site, it might not be showing up at all on Google yet. To double-check whether it appears, try searching "site:[your URL]". If no results are showing up, this might mean that your site is not yet indexed because Google hasn't had a chance to crawl it.
What are indexing and crawling?
Indexing is how search engines gather information about websites. Indexing involves search engines crawling a page (finding it, trying to understand what it is about) and storing information about it in the Google index.
Google does its indexing by using search engine crawlers - automated software that 'crawls' through the web to find pages to index. Google's crawler, Googlebot, finds web pages by following links, so if your site is new and there are no links to it yet it might be hard for Googlebot to crawl.
Fortunately, there's a simple solution to this issue. Registering with Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools) allows you to submit your sitemap to Google, nudging it to start crawling and indexing your site more quickly.
What is a sitemap?
Your sitemap is the blueprint of your website's pages. Search engine crawlers like Googlebot use sitemaps to find and crawl all the pages of a site. The sitemap has information about all the different pages and files and as well as notes on when they were last updated.
It's especially important to submit your sitemap to Google Search Console if your website is new, if it's very large, or if important pages aren't linked to each other very well, because this allows the indexing of the entire site. For example, if you have pages in your site that aren't linked to from the home page, it's useful to submit a sitemap to Google Search Console that makes crawling these pages easier.
Not sure how to find your sitemap to submit to Google Search Console? Your sitemap can be accessed by typing your website's URL followed by /sitemap.xml or /robots.txt.
How long does indexing usually take?
Normally, Google's indexing can take up to a few weeks. This is why it's useful to submit your sitemap to Google Search Console to ask Google to crawl it faster. Plus, if you update a webpage, you can submit the URL to ask Google to crawl and re-index the updated version.
What else can you do with Google Search Console?
Google Search Console is a free indexing tool that has multiple features that can make your website more visible on Google. For example, you can use it to:
- See which search queries your audience are making when they come to your site
- See which other websites are linking to your site
- Submit the page URL when you add new content to pages, meaning that Google is always indexing and displaying the most up-to-date version of your site
- Tell Google to index different versions of your website for different countries and languages (these will be displayed in the sitemap)
- Check whether there are crawl issues in your site
So, submitting your sitemap for indexing and using Google Search Console's tools is one of the first things you should do to improve your website's visibility on Google.
2. Submit your site to online directories
Online directories are listings of businesses with links to their websites. If you submit your website to an online directory, this can drive traffic to the site and boost its ranking in search results.
Submitting to Google My Business
Google My Business listings appear on the first page above other search results so they are a great way to get visibility for your business. In the listing you can include your details such as a summary of your business and your hours as well as a URL so people can access your website.
Registering for a Google My Business listing means that your business will rank higher for searches that are location specific. For example, if you have a pet supply business based in Manchester, searches for 'pet supplies Manchester' will show your business.
It's easy to do - all you have to do is submit your claim to your business, and then Google will send a physical code to the address to verify.
Submitting a listing on Google My Business also improves local SEO. Search queries made from the local area will be more likely to show your web pages in the results. So, if someone in Manchester searches the term 'pet supplies', your business will also appear in the results.
One more thing: it's important to keep your My Business listing up to date once you've set it up. Use relevant keywords and up to date information to encourage people to visit the listing and your website.
Submitting to industry-specific directories
There will likely be online directories dedicated to your business area or niche, and it can be useful to get your website featured in these.
However, having your site linked to in online directories isn't a guarantee of good rankings like it used to be in the past. Directories are still useful for driving traffic to your website, and may have some impact on ranking (especially local rankings), but don't rely on them to improve your SEO visibility.
We suggest considering the quality of the directory itself before you submit your site to be listed on it. Is it likely to reach your target audience? Does it come across as spammy or disreputable, potentially damaging your business' reputation?
Getting featured in directories related to your industry might be useful for SEO, but we suggest prioritising setting up Google My Business to increase your online visibility.
3. Improve and optimise your content
The content of your website pages has a huge bearing on the site's performance on Google's rankings. Using carefully selected, competitive keywords can work wonders for your on-page SEO. Here's how it works.
On the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), Google shows users pages that match the keywords in their search query (the text they typed into Google). There are different types of keywords:
Short-tail keywords are the broad search terms that are likely to have a high volume of searches. These are generic keywords like 'hiking UK'.
Long-tail keywords are more specific, like 'child-friendly hiking Lake District'. They're the keywords used by people who have already narrowed down what they want and are closer to making a purchase.
You'll need to think about which specific keywords your target audience is likely to search for and which you want to rank for. Then, you need to incorporate these keywords into the content of your site in page titles, URLs, and in the page text. However, be careful not to overuse them or this can look spammy and can lead to search engines ranking your page less highly.
You can set up Google Analytics to help with this. Google Analytics helps you learn more about which terms people are searching to find your site.
Optimising URL content
URLs are a good place to put the keywords you want to rank for. Google prefers clean, easy-to-read URLs that have clear keywords in them. So, as part of your SEO strategy you should optimise your new URLs so they are relevant to the content of the page rather than being random letters and numbers.
4. Improve your metadata
The content your audience sees on the page isn't the only place where keywords can make a difference to your visibility on Google. Metadata is basically how your site communicates with search engines. Every one of your pages will have a title tag and meta description. The meta description is what shows up on your Google search result under the title. Both are a good place to put your relevant keywords, showing the search engine what the page is about.
You can also optimise your images by giving them titles and descriptions that are rich with your target keywords. This means that people are more likely to find your page via Google Images.
5. Focus on links
In SEO, we talk about a few different types of links:
Internal links are links from one page on your website to another page on your website. Visitors use these to navigate the website and crawlers use them to index the site. Therefore, internal links are important for your on-site SEO.
External links are links from your site to a different site, or vice versa. Linking to another high-authority site can be good for SEO because it makes your page look more trustworthy to Google.
Backlinks (also called inbound links) are links from other websites to yours. They are a type of external link and are a part of off-page SEO that is extremely important for improving your site's visibility. This is because they make search engines see your pages as authoritative and useful, and are therefore more likely to show them in the SERP.
How to create backlinks
It's easy for you to link to your own pages or other websites on your site, but how can you get other sites to link to you?
There are a couple of ways of achieving this.
The first relates back to our previous tip. If the content on your site is useful and valuable to people, they are naturally more likely to link to it. If your blog posts have great insights, backlinks will come more easily than if your content is generic and dull.
If you have a good social media presence, it's easier to share this content so that more people are likely to see it and link to it. Unfortunately, social media shares don't count as backlinks, but it's still useful to share content with a wider audience. Make sure your blog posts and pages are easy to share on social media with one click.
Alternatively, you can reach out to other publications or blogs and pitch guest posts where you share expertise and link back to your own website.
Or, you can ask other experts, business owners, or influencers to create content for your site, and they will then link back to your page.
Remember that the quality of backlinks also contributes to a page's ranking in search results. A backlink from a high-quality site will boost your ranking more than one from a low-quality page, so it's important to verify that your backlinks are coming from good sites.
What about paying for backlinks?
You may have heard that some businesses offer backlinks in bulk to improve your SEO. However, these can often do more harm than good.
Paid link building is considered a Black Hat SEO technique because it tries to manipulate Google into showing your page.
The keyword here is 'tries'. While this may have worked once in the past, Google's algorithm now values the quality of the website hosting the backlinks. If your site is linked to by a low-quality site that the search engine sees as spammy or disreputable, this can harm your own rankings.
Our advice? Never pay for backlinks because they can damage your SEO visibility.
6. Improve loading speeds
One of the things that makes Google rank your site higher is having a fast loading speed. If your page loads slowly, users will have a poor experience and are more likely to click away.
So how can you increase the loading speed of your site? Here are some steps you can take:
- Optimise images by reducing their file size as much as you can without losing too much quality
- Use images only where they add value to the web pages
- Avoid unnecessary metadata and plugins
- Reduce the number of HTTP requests
- Use fast hosting
- Avoid render-blocking resources
7. Focus on mobile experience
According to research about mobile searching, people are more likely to use their phones to search for local results. Users also want simpler results on mobile and are less likely to want to see complicated pages full of information.
Google's search engine algorithm knows that increasing numbers of searches are being carried out on mobile devices and therefore its ranking system prioritises mobile-friendly websites.
To improve your site's user experience on mobile, here are some things to consider.
Mobile site loading speed
Even more so than on desktop, mobile visitors will click away if your site doesn't load quickly. Google's ranking takes mobile loading speeds into account and therefore it's important that you optimise your pages to load rapidly on mobile.
You can use Page Speed Insights to check how your site is performing on mobile and desktop and to get recommendations on how to increase your loading speed.
Clutter on the mobile site
Pop-ups and adverts are annoying on desktop, but users hate them even more on mobile. Search engines will penalise your site if it features pop-ups that slow the loading speed and ruin the user experience.
Images are another form of clutter on your page. Pictures that look great on your desktop version of the site might take too long to load or take up too much space on a mobile version. Therefore, consider hiding some of the images from your mobile version of the site.
8. Hire an SEO Agency
No matter how good your site is, sometimes it can be hard to get it to rank as high on Google as it deserves. We know that SEO can be tricky and time consuming for site owners if you don't have the right tools.
Here at Viaduct Generation, we're experts in helping our clients' sites rank higher on search engines to help get them the organic traffic their pages deserve.
We'd love to show you what our SEO can do to increase the visibility of your business, so submit your website for a free review today or contact us to learn more.
