One of the reasons many businesses come to our digital marketing agency is to improve Google rankings for their website. In this article, our SEO team exploring a number of the most common reasons for a website not ranking and explain how you can go about improving this issue. #1 – Poor Keyword Placement and … Continued
One of the reasons many businesses come to our digital marketing agency is to improve Google rankings for their website. In this article, our SEO team exploring a number of the most common reasons for a website not ranking and explain how you can go about improving this issue.
The Google algorithm categorises and ranks your website by searching it for keyword phrases and determining their relevance to the queries typed in on Google. It searches several areas of your web page for this, including title tags, meta description, website domain, the beginning of the page content, and the written content itself.
The keyword you are trying to get your website to rank for should be included in each of these sections in a way that is natural and easy to read – NOT spammy. If you start keyword stuffing, the algorithm will actually punish your website with lower rankings, so avoid it at all costs.
Regularly posting your own, original new content shows the Google algorithm that your website is active, engaged with your customers and adding value – which are all critical to increasing your rankings. Content should be optimised for SEO and can include blogs, videos, infographics, news items, eBooks, downloadable items and more, so it’s easy to create content the algorithm – as well as your audience – will love.
Websites are like any physical asset – you can manage them and service them but, over time, they are simply no longer going to work as they used to. The internet is a very dynamic place and customers (as well as tech giants like Google) place a lot of emphasis on having the latest, most up-to-date features.
Customers and the algorithm itself will penalise your website if page loading speeds are slow, if your links no longer work, if your contact or product information is out of date, or if you are using outdated or black hat SEO tactics. It’s also a good idea to renew your domain to a long-term registration to show you’re here to stay.
As with keywords, link-building should be natural and instinctive, and all links should be working correctly. A good link-building strategy with backlinks to high-quality organisations and reputable sources, as well as clear internal link-building to products, services and information is not only useful for your customers, it helps improve Google rankings for your website too.
Good links have text within the link that links to the domain and keywords of the content you are linking to, and that links to a source that offer credible expertise and authority on the topic. This helps increase your trust, authority and expertise factors, making your website look more credible, authentic and valuable to the Google algorithm.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of less-than-ethical SEO specialists out there, many of whom offer quick fixes for SEO issues that do a lot more harm than good – and it’s easier than you think to fall victim to these so-called black hat SEO tactics, especially when businesses were first getting online. A lot of these tactics, which can incur penalties from Google, are still in use today:
The reality is that a good quality SEO strategy takes time to develop and deliver results, which is why many people are tempted to try these unapproved tactics. As the Google algorithm becomes increasingly sophisticated, websites using these tactics are increasingly penalised and even delisted. It’s just not worth the risk!
