This post is created specifically for a friend of mine. She wants to get listed higher on Google. My friend has a local business and wants to get her web site ranked higher on Google, get more traffic and ultimately more customers.
Hopefully you'll find this post helpful with step-by-step instructions on the principles involved.
These are the basic initial steps in how to get your website listed higher. There are many other factors involved (eg page speed, internal links, external links etc etc), but these steps will get you off to a flying start.
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Step 1 – List the words people search for
Open up Word or Notepad. Imagine you are one of your potential customers. You are sitting in front of your computer and you want to find someone, to fix your problem, offer a particular service or sell a certain product.
What would that person type into Google in order to find you or your business?
Type out all of the words and phrases that the potential customer might put into the Google search box. EG if you are a make up artist, your potential customer might type into Google:
- make up artist in <name of local town/area>
- make up person for my wedding
- I need someone to do my makeup for my wedding
- best wedding make up in <name of local/town>
- how can I create amazing make up effects?
List as many different phrases as you can.
TIP: There is a website that can show you the search phrases people use. It's called Answer the Public.
Enter your main word/phrase and you'll be presented with other related questions. The darker the green circle the more people use that phrase.
Here is an example...
Click for larger version
Alternatively carry out a search on Google and scroll to the very bottom of the page - there you will find a list of related searches - phrases that other people search for. Here is what is looks like...
Step 2 – Add a blog to your site
Create a blog on your web site. Most content management systems like Wix, Weebly and WordPress have a blogging facility and allow you to add a Blog section to your web site.
Google likes to see lots of text and regular information being added to a web site. Blogs are an ideal way of doing this. A blog can be used to answer the potential questions that your clients might have.
Strive to make your blog the most useful and helpful one on the internet.
Step 3 – Create a blog post
This takes some time, but nothing worth doing, comes easy! If you want to get listed higher on Google you have to put in the leg work... or in this case finger work.
Looking at your list of words that people type into the search box to find your business, see if you can group certain phrases together.
In our example above we had a couple of phrases that included the word “wedding”. So using this example we could create a blog post that is all about “how to find someone to do my wedding make up” or how about “5 tips for finding someone to do your wedding makeup.”
You need to create a blog post, with that title.
Step 4 – Add at least 400 words
Unfortunately, this is a bit like going to back to school or Uni and you’ve got to get your word count up! Add relevant text and think of different ways of saying the same thing.
Try and come up with alternative methods of writing similar text. (see what I did there?)
Include all the phrases and words that you grouped together. I say 400 words as a minimum. It really should be more. This blog post for example is 1,259 words long!
Step 5 – Add headings
Break the text up into short paragraphs, with relevant headings. Format your blog post with headings. Most content management systems give you the ability to change how text is formatted. Text that is formatted as Heading 1, will be bold and larger. So it will look something like this:
Step 6 – Spruce it up and publish
You should add some relevant photos and images to your blog post to make it all pretty and nice to look at.
Add at least three images. Set the filename of your images to something like "wedding-makeup.jpg" or "makeup-tip-1.jpg".
Make sure you add the alt text to each image and again include your keywords if relevant.
Try and use photos you have taken yourself or make the images yourself. Unique images are always better, but if you're really stuck then use free images from a site like Pixabay, PicJumbo or MorgueFile.
IMPORTANT - Ensure whatever image you use isn't copyrighted. Make sure the image is licensed for commercial use. Believe me, you don't want the lawyers sending you snotty emails asking for hundreds of quid in compensation.
Click that Publish button to make your beautifully worded masterpiece viewable to the world!
Step 7 – Spread the word
The final step is to let everyone know (including Google) about your wonderful blog post. If you have a Twitter account, tweet about your new blog post. Copy the url of your blog post and paste it into Twitter.
If you have a Facebook account, tell all your friends about it… in fact you should tell the world! (make your post visible to everyone and set to "Public", not just friends.) Copy and paste the url.
If you're on LinkedIn…. yes you guessed it… add a post about your new blog post. The same goes for any other social media accounts.
You're done...
That’s it. You now have to wait, although you should really move onto your next blog post. Don’t hang around, start work on your next blog post right now! Google loves regular, consistent content. Target another phrase potential customers might use to find you.
Some of your blog posts/pages are going to do better than others, but if you produce relevant information, that is well written, helpful and isn’t just a couple of paragraphs, then you will have some success. The level of success also depends on your market and how much competition there is.
How to get Google to love your blog:
If you blog post/page is informative and provides real value then people are going to share it and link to it from other websites. This will help to push your listing further up the Google rankings because the more links the better. Think of each link to your website as a vote of confidence, a signal of trust. Google will reward such websites with higher rankings.
These are the basics of optimising a web page. There is a lot more you can do to get your web site listed higher up on Google, but this is the starting point. If you don’t want to add a blog, just add normal web pages, but ensure those pages contain the words and phrases we spoke about in step 1.
Good luck and remember me when you’re rich and famous!
If you need any help in getting your site listed higher then leave a comment below or let us know.
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