Ten years ago creating a website that would rank high in Google wasn’t as hard as it is today. You learned some basic HTML or purchased a template, find some keywords, and add a few title tags and meta tags and you were done.
With Google updating the way that they index and rank websites, many people have made a whole career surrounding search engine optimization (SEO). The main problem is that many employees at companies don’t know how to make Google SEO work for them. More specifically, employees at companies don’t know how pages are ranked, can’t keep up with the changes to Google SEO, and they can’t find opportunities to make Google SEO work for them. If you don’t know much about SEO here is a quick video to bring you up to speed.
Luckily I have created a brief introduction to Google SEO with lots of pointers to external links for further reading. This summary will cover and introduction to how pages are ranked in Google SEO, some of the recent updates to Google SEO, and one example of how local businesses owners can use Google+ to increase their ranking in Google SEO. These topics are covered throughout the 3 posts below.
How Pages Are Ranked in Google SEO
Page Rank works by counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important the website is. You can find more information about the complex formula here and here.
The main to ways to get your website to rank higher on Google are:
- Make sure that you have content that is engaging and relevant to your users on your website that is compelling to read
- Get links pointing into and out of your website
Below are a few questions you can ask yourself to check if your content is engaging:
- What are your areas of expertise?
- What differentiates you from other websites?
- Why should customers care about your website?
- Who is your competition?
Social media is another great way to create backlinks and distribute your content to many potential customers. Social media is especially in industries where it plays a major role in communicating with customers and businesses.
Google + is also growing in importance in terms of increasing the speed that your page gets indexed on Google. After all customers can’t find your website if it hasn’t been indexed yet.