How to Get Found on Google in 4 Easy to Follow Steps
In the modern digital marketplace, every brand is looking for a way to boost their visibility online. Without a doubt, one of the best ways to reach more customers is to improve your rankings on search engines like Google. But if you want to get found on Google, you’re going to need to put in some work.
Search engine optimization takes time to work its magic. You can’t just write a great blog and expect the traffic to start pouring in. Instead, you’ve got to be strategic about where you spend your time and energy. Having a plan in place can help you focus your efforts on the most important parts of your SEO strategy.
Whether you are just getting your website up for the first time or you’re looking for ways to optimize your existing site, you can use the 4 steps below to get found on Google in no time:
1. Do your keyword research.
SEO keyword research is a critical first step to get found on Google. Keyword research helps you identify the keywords and phrases that your target customers use to find brands like yours on the search engine. This doesn’t just include broad keywords that are one or two words long but also long-tail keywords, which are more specific phrases that a search engine user might type in to narrow down their search.
Keyword research takes time, but it’s all worth it when you start bringing more relevant traffic to your site.
To get started with your keyword research, you’ll need to brainstorm some potential keywords that are relevant to your brand and the products or services that you provide. This gives you an effective starting point for looking which keywords can actually drive the most potential traffic to your site.
Invite your whole team to get together and brainstorm which keywords and phrases they think potential customers might use to find you online. Don’t forget to include more specific long-tail keywords in your brainstorm.
Remember, this doesn’t have to be a perfect list and every keyword suggestion won’t make the cut. But it does give you a nice jumping off point for narrowing down your keyword list.
Expand your keyword list.
2. Create content optimized for the search engines.
If you want to get found on Google, you’ve got to create content that’s optimized for the search engines. Now, that you have a list of keywords, you can develop relevant and useful content that emphasizes the keywords and phrases that consumers are using to find brands like yours. Your content is what the search engine crawls, or searches through, to find these keywords and deliver the right results to search engine users.
Content is known as an on-page SEO factor, meaning that it is something you do on your site to boost your search engine optimization. Google considers great content one of its top 3 ranking factors, so it’s vital that businesses invest in producing and publishing great content on a regular basis.
Content marketing and SEO are a match made in digital marketing heaven.
Content marketing is not only an important part of your SEO strategy, but it also plays a vital role in helping fuel your digital marketing campaigns. When you produce great content for your audience to read, you are engaging and educating them. Which goes a long way toward guiding them to the next step in the purchasing process.
For this reason, your content should be optimized for search engines but
relevant and useful for the people reading it.
3. Focus on off-page elements of SEO.
Publishing lots of great content is just the start. All of your keyword research and optimized content will go to waste if you don’t have the off-page SEO to support it.
If you want to get found on Google, you’ll need to do some work off your website to work to drive more traffic to your pages and show Google they are relevant and useful.
This visual gives a great breakdown of the different tasks involved with on- and off-page SEO.
Off-page SEO helps increase the traffic back to your site while also helping you establish quality backlinks. Backlinks are links from other sites back to your content. Backlinks are Google’s #1 ranking factor as they are one of the best testaments to the quality of your content.
If other reputable and relevant sites are linking back to your content, it’s a clear sign that the content is useful and of high quality.
Here are just a few activities that you can do “off-page” to encourage more quality backlinks and boost your SERP ranking:
4. Monitor and test.
SEO is always changing. It seems like just when you’ve got your groove going with your SEO strategy, Google throws another curve ball by changing their algorithm. That’s why it’s vital for businesses to stay up-to-date with the latest in SEO and adjust their strategy and tactics to account for these shifts in best practices and strategies.
Not only are SEO best practices always changing, but so are the keywords that customers are using to find brands like yours. It’s important for brands to consistently analyze their web traffic and look at the performance of different keywords.
You should also stay on top of your search engine rankings and investigate potential reasons why your position might have slipped.
The rules of SEO are always changing. Start with a checklist of best practices but stay up-to-date with the latest SEO trends.
When you first get started, use this as a baseline for how well your SEO strategy is working. As you continue to monitor your results and make changes to your tactics and content, keep track of what you are doing differently and how it impacts your performance.
A great way to test out new strategies or see what types of content resonate best with your audience is a little testing.
Get Help Getting Found on Google
Though search engine optimization is certainly a worthwhile endeavor, it also takes time and resources to do it right. If you don’t have the team in-house to get the job done, you may want to consider hiring an experienced SEO company who can help you develop and implement a strategy that will help you get found on Google.
At LYFE Marketing, we offer both on-page SEO services and ongoing SEO management services. Our goal is to help you develop a solid plan and take the steps necessary to get found on Google. Our team can help you boost online traffic, grow your search engine ranking, and improve conversions through strategic monthly SEO services.
Not sure if managed SEO services are right for you?
Beyond SEO: New Ways to Drive Traffic to Websites
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