Getting your content found in Google search is paramount to driving targeted traffic to your website.
However, deciphering Google’s search algorithm is difficult for anyone without inside information to the logic used by the search engine giant to serve page results. But if you follow these best SEO practices, over time, people searching for products or services will find your website via Google search.
How to Be Found in Google Search
Publish Original and Useful Content
One of the past leading complaints by people using Google search was results served little to no useful content. Black Hat SEO hacks had figured out inventive ways to manipulate search results.
Google responded by tweaking its algorithm throughout the years to combat these Black Hat techniques and to provide more meaningful and useful results. Today, it is best practice for any business owner to publish original, relevant, and valuable content on their website and blog.
By providing useful content, Google search will not only favor your site above websites with poorly written and useless content, but you will also gain a loyal subscriber base.
Choose ‘Low-Hanging’ Targeted Keywords
While keyword stuffing is a thing of the past, optimizing your website and blog content with them is not. Keywords and key phrases, also known as short- and longtail keywords, are still the main ways people find information on the Internet.
Therefore, thorough research is needed to find optimal keywords to use in your content. Many keywords are already out of range for you to rank your site, but there are many mid- to low-competitive keywords and phrases that can bring targeted traffic to your site. Be sure to find keywords that are relevant to your business. Read this article on How to do Simple Keyword Research.
Again, be mindful that you are not merely identifying keywords to game the system. If there are keywords that have little competition and they are relevant to your business, by all mean craft content around those words. This type of SEO is a legitimate and surgical way to optimize your site in the eyes of Google’s search algorithm.
Follow Best On-Page SEO Practices
Sprinkling your Web pages with a few keywords won’t cut it in Google search. You must optimize your Web pages and blog posts with your target keywords so search engines can crawl your site and understand your content.
Add keywords to H1 titles, alt image descriptions, meta descriptions, and the URL of a page or post. Page content should contain at least a 1.5% density keyword optimization. Internal links are also crucial in optimizing your website. Read How to Optimize a WordPress Blog Post for Maximum Reacht to learn more about how to do on-page SEO.
Add Off-Page SEO for an Extra Boost
Off-page SEO refers to any action taken off your website to improve your rankings. Link-building is a significant component of off-page SEO and involves directory listings, guest posting/commenting, and having high authority sites link back to your website.
Regularly Update Your Content
Another signal Google search needs to serve your website content in top search results is fresh content. News and similar sites are regularly featured at the top of search page results because of the timeliness of their articles. The same factor applies to any type of website, whether it’s B2B or B2C. Be sure to publish at least two to four times per week. Even once per month is better than not at all.
In Summary