Every business wants to be at the top of Google search or at least on the first page. But how do you get there?
There are a lot of social media experts, black hat tricks and paid strategies that can get you to the top of Google search but there are also a number of things that you can be doing right now that will help you get to the top of a search organically.
In this article we will explore 5 ways to improve your Google ranking without using Google Adwords or black hat tricks (which can get you in trouble anyways)
1. Secure your Google Maps location
It still surprises me how many established businesses still don’t have their Google maps location secured. If you are a brick and mortar style business with a physical location you will want to make sure that you have secured your business on Google maps. The simplest way to do this is to do a search of your business on Google maps. If your business comes up click through to the location, and onto the Google+ page. Once you land on the Google+ page scroll to the bottom. If you see “manage this page” it means that it has not been secured and you can do it now.
Once your location is confirmed update your profile with all of your business information including images, logo, hours of operation, website and other social media sites.
2. Post original content to Google+
Now that you have confirmed your Google maps location, which is tied to your Google+ page, you will want to continue updating it. Posting content on your Google+ account similar to what you post on Facebook will help you to “feed the Google monster” with content, keywords and links that lead back to your website.
Posting 3-5 posts on Google+ a week can make a huge difference in your search rankings
3. Make sure your website is mobile responsive
Google released a new algorithm on April 21st that will penalize websites that are not mobile-friendly. To test whether your site is responsive you can use the free Google Mobile-Friendly testing tool.
If your website is not responsive you should contact your webmaster and discuss the option of changing your theme or creating a new design.
4. Create fresh content
Creating fresh content for your website will make Google crawl your website more often and will also allow you to have more images indexed.
One of the best ways to create fresh content is to start a blog. Blogging even once every week can make a huge difference. Focus on writing blogs around the key questions your customers are asking. This will help you easily create new content that aligns with the keywords and phrases you want to show up in search for.
5. Create strong meta descriptions
When you are creating new pages on your website and writing blogs, spend some extra time writing your meta description for each page. Your meta description is the HTML code used to describe the page when it shows up in search.
You can customize what this little snippet will say, or you can leave it to Google to decide. Creating a strong meta description will help someone searching on Google understand that your article answers their question perfectly. Your meta description is one of the key elements Google indexes to help determine your ranking and keywords.
So if you want your website to increase in search rankings but don’t have time to hire an SEO specialist, we recommend following these 5 guidelines to help you start to improve your rankings.
There is no guarantee that anything will work as each industry is different and Google is always making changes, but one thing is for sure—if you produce good valuable content that your customers are looking for and you make it easy for Google to find it, your content will start to show up in search.
