Search Marketing Smarts: Rising to the Top of Google Page Rankings

In today’s competitive economy, reaching the top tiers of any internet search is vital to surviving and growing as a company. More than ever, people take to the internet the first chance they get to find the goods and services they are looking for, and if you aren’t one of the selected few that show up at the top of the page, you’re missing out on opportunities.

Getting your company’s website to the top of a search page is so important, in fact, that there is an entire field of study dedicated to doing so: search engine optimization, or SEO. Following good SEO practices will help your website rise in the rankings so customers can find you more easily. Here are some of those practices that you will need in order to get your website to the top of the search pages.

Create Great Content

Great content always has — and always will be — one of the most important factors in getting your website better search results. Search engines like Google and Bing put a premium on websites that offer in-depth, well-written content as opposed to sites that just throw up content for the sake of filling their pages.

This means that whatever you post to your website (blog posts, articles, photos, etc.) needs to be as good as you can make it. When you add a post, there are key SEO practices that you need to follow, including word count, the number of headings and sections the post has and how well the search engines can track the links to and from your page.

This takes a lot of effort, but it’s worth it. If you can do so, you will see your website rise and rise in the rankings. You can find the things that search engines are looking for here.

Optimize Your Site for Mobile

With the ubiquity of mobile devices, millions of people will be visiting your website through their smartphones or tablets. This means that you need to ensure that their experience is worth their time, so optimizing your site for mobile users is a must.

If your site takes too long to load, people will soon leave. In fact, it’s estimated that people will think about leaving your site if it takes longer than 10 seconds to load. This gives you a short window to keep them on your site. But how can you ensure that your site loads quickly?

The best thing you can do is to trim all of the extras that bog down websites: large images on the front page, ad-blocking software, and Flash plugins all take precious time to load when someone visits your site, causing them to wait. Streamline your pages as much as possible and your customers will thank you.

Improve User Engagement

Giving people to stay on your website will help create more sales and more loyal customers. You want your visitors to stay on as long as possible, so you need to give them excuses to do so by keeping them interested and entertained.

There are four main things you can do to improve user engagement: have a place for people to leave comments, use active participation tools like quizzes and surveys, give visitors the option to share the content on their social media feeds and, finally, a place for them to “like” or otherwise react to the content.

Each of these strategies will allow your visitors to feel like they are part of the conversation when it comes to your goods, services, and information, which will make them feel as if they have a stake with you. This, in turn, will create more visits that last longer.

Pay Attention to the Stats

You can do all of the SEO in the world, but if you don’t have the tools to monitor your progress, it can be all for naught.

There are companies out there that provide you with all of the tools you need to follow your website’s progress (you can read about PosiRank here). These companies offer reporting and insights regarding the effectiveness of your website and give you options for how you can improve your website’s ranking.

This is key because if you are doing something wrong, you will be able to find the problem and fix it quickly, helping your website climb the rankings faster.

One of the most important things you can do for your company is to get to the top of internet rankings. Follow good SEO practices and, with a little time, you’ll see your site rise.

Alicia Bond works for a small marketing agency. She loves to look for the latest trends and shares them on a variety of marketing websites.