UPDATED October 2021
Congratulations! Your website is LIVE! Why aren’t I on page 1 of Google I hear you ask?
In the past, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), or “being found by Google” was all about ranking highly in Google for targeted keywords; where high rankings meant lots of visitors. In 2019, things have changed. Achieving website indexing with Google organically can take 6-9 months and with no guarantees, since search engine rules change frequently, rankings can fluctuate. This relates to individual pages, not whole domain names.
Google’s algorithm looks at several areas of content, which is referred to as Universal search. This includes results such as images, videos, blogs, news and maps; and the increased visibility resulting in an ‘organic’ listing, or free search result, being pushed further down the page. Organic rankings are (in general terms) more trusted by users than paid listings. It’s the same result from the same query. All of this of course takes place before you consider the space taken up on page 1 for sponsored, or paid listings at the top (which is a maximum of 4 positions only).
SEO relies less on high volume keywords and more on a variety of content and formats for your audiences who are looking for solutions to their problems.
Now that you’ve launched your website, it’s time to take the next steps to improve your online visibility, which is beyond high volume keywords. This means being found wherever your customers are and where your industry peers and connections may be. This approach relies less on high volume keywords and more on a variety of content and formats for your audiences who are looking for solutions to their problems. There are some great tips here in this A – Z guide on how to grow your business with SEO.
So let’s address SEO in bite-sized chunks, and Part 1 of our blog series focuses on:
PART 1: 5 Quick Tips Regarding Linking Within Your Website
Linking within your website is one of the more important aspects of Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO for those who are internet savvy! When investigating linking, you might hear people talking about inbound links (or backlinks) and outbound links. But what does this mean?
Put really simply, inbound links are hyperlinks back to your website from another site, and outbound links are hyperlinks that take a visitor from your website to another external website. Both types of links are really important to ensure that search engines (like Google) understand the importance of your website. Get it?!
And just to confuse things, there’s also internal links – these are the links leading people around your site, and Google loves them!
TIP 1 – Link Building
It’s really easy to create outbound links from your website. Think about complimentary (but not competitive) products and services that your customers might like to know about. Say you’re a hotel … what other local businesses would your guests like to know about? Cafes, golf courses, day spas? The list is endless. Rather than creating a ‘Links’ page, simply work this information into your content, and create the links (amazingly simple with something like WordPress!) An extra tip when creating outbound links is to ensure they open in a new browser tab – that way people won’t leave your website.
TIP 2 – Business Directories
Create free business directory listings on quality online directories as a way of creating inbound links. This will improve your online presence, boost SEO, improve your business reputation and increase your brand visibility. Check out the top 50 local directory sites in Australia.
TIP 3 – Backlinks
Once you have a well optimised website, with great content, it’s time to start building backlinks (or inbound links)! There’s some great free tools available to help you check whether you already have backlinks, such as Ubersuggest. Building backlinks is probably the hardest part of any link building strategy, but definitely worth the effort. An extra tip … check out the backlinks of your competitors by using the FREE Ubersuggest tool …
If you’ve looked at your Ubersuggest recommendations, you might be ready for the next step, with these grass-roots, relationship-building backlink techniques from Julian Goldie. They definitely take some work and effort, but they can be fruitful, and let’s be honest, there are no free kicks in marketing!
If you still can’t get enough of backlinking tactics, here’s another batch of link-building strategies from SEO Sherpa. These are less reliant on building 1:1 relationships and more tactical approaches such as using custom blog images that help you get found.
TIP 4 – Orphaned Content
Make sure you avoid orphaned content on your website. This is seen as pages that contain no links. Pages that don’t contain any links will rarely get discovered by the search engines or visitors to your website. Make it easy for Google to get an idea of the structure of your website by implementing an internal linking strategy.
TIP 5 – Don’t buy cheap links
No matter what you read online, DON’T undertake a link building campaign that involves buying low quality links. This is completely frowned upon by Google and will result in your website being penalised. It really is about quality over quantity. Building quality links takes time. Be patient and you will be rewarded! An option is to work with a linkbuilding outsource partner who will take care of the heavy lifting for you.
As the amazing creators of Yoast SEO plugin say, “A successful link building strategy should always be aimed to bring a new, aspired audience to your website. A welcome side effect will then be a higher ranking in Google. As long as you consider link building as a way to reach out to other sites in order to get more visitors from that site, you’re doing it the ‘right’ way.”
If you need help with your SEO and link building strategy, get in touch to see how we might be able to give you a hand.
