4 Steps for Good Search Engine Rankings

Before I begin I thought I'd just point out that the image above is myself (sat down) and our office manager who just realised he was in the shot and I thought it was better than another shot of a Google sign (Yawn). I was trying to think of you which is an important point I shall bring up later.

Many people talk about ranking on search engines such as Google as a mystical art, like some new age magic trick. The thing is it's not that hard to understand how, although the practice is somewhat a different story. In this article, I'd like to go over some simple facts that may give you a better insight into what Google is looking for when ranking your website.

1. Content is king

Content goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway content is king. Quality content that answers questions, entertains or informs is what people are searching for when they turn to the search engines.

Writing good content though is easier said than done. Today's internet is an overload of information much of which is out of date or sensationalised or just plain repeated. It's somewhat hard to write anything new, and with that in mind, I am going to leave this section right here except to say think of your visitors and what they want.

2. Next is trust

Would you recommend someone you don't trust to someone you respect? No, you wouldn't. Search engines look at your site to see if it's trustworthy before they will recommend you to searchers. Data such as the age of your domain, it's security, even who shares your IP address are all factors in calculating trust.

You also have offsite trust factors too, who is linking to your site, how many visitors you have, how long they stay on your site and of course, something I've written about before, and that's honest reviews.

Think of your website as someone who has turned up for an interview for a position that requires a lot of responsibility; first, you need to know they have the skills necessary to do the job, then you need to know how reliable they are. The search engines look at your site in a very similar way.

3. Do you care?

A good indicator of whether you care about your site and the visitors to it comes in many forms. How many coding errors are there? Do you care enough to fix them and they can happen quite often even to the best of sites, adding a new third-party app may cause some issues, I know, I'm currently working on some myself. As I said, it happens a lot one day your code is clean next you have 50 errors on one page. So regular checking using W3C's validation will help you keep on top.

The speed of your site is another indicator of how much you care as desktops can deal with quite large files but someone using a phone on wifi may be somewhat annoyed if your site eats through all their allocated data. So cutting down on the mobile site requests will ensure better delivery and better speed. Of course, Google is trying to help with AMP pages, which is a little controversial with some developers and designers, but the quick delivery of useful information is better than providing the next sci-fi blockbuster.

4. Your visitors matter most.

 I've always said that SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the wrong term to think of when optimising your site, you should consider optimisation more along the lines of YVO (Your Visitor Optimisation) after all the search engines aren't buying what you are trying to sell. Always focus on what would be great for your visitors they will make or break you. 

Which are better 10,000 visitors who leave straight away because they don't have any reason to stay or 100 visitors who become loyal customers because you catered to their needs? I don't need to answer that for you, but you'd be surprised how many people think they need to drive 1000s to their site rather than take the time focussing on what their potentially loyal viewers want.

Just to finish off.

None of the above is in any particular order as they are all essential and they need to work harmoniously together to create an excellent website. In the end, it's your business' reputation and quality you're trying to convey, even more than that it's you, so give them the best you have to offer.

I shall, of course, talk about these 4 steps in much more detail, what actions you can take and if you do a little at a time, wait and then see what works for you best your site will definitely make the journey up the rankings.