Drive organic traffic to your website with this simple roadmap.

You’ve spent endless hours designing the perfect website for your business, only to find it is not displaying in the search results on Google’s first, second, or third pages. Rest assured, there are steps you can take to increase your website ranking. At the end of the day, the best way to rank well on search engines is to prioritize the customer experience on your website. There are two dimensions of Search Engine Optimization: On-Site SEO and Off-Site SEO. On-Site SEO is formatting and organizing your website content. Off-Site SEO is creating and spreading content to build quality backlinks to your website. In this blog, I will provide a roadmap you can follow to drive organic traffic to your website.

On-Site SEO

1. Maximize your relevance with keywords. 

According to the Moz article, “How to Rank on Google,” start with “Seed Keywords.” Seed keywords are obvious phrases you think you want to rank for. To find good seed keywords, research the keywords that your website and your competitors’ websites already rank for. Check out SEO tools like Google Keyword Planner. Your website URL, title tag, header tags, main content, image alt text, and anchor text are all locations on your website that rank heavily in the calculation of relevance by search engines. Include your target keywords and phrases in all of these locations. Be careful not to do “keyword stuffing” in the main content – only apply what makes sense when a user is browsing your website. 

2. Develop target search phrases.
   
   Target search phrases should be developed based on the relevance of search intent,  traffic, competition, and current ranking. Keep your keywords relevant to the product or service you are offering. Research keywords and phrases with a high level of traffic, however, consider your competition. To test this, search for a specific keyword phase and observe which websites display. If you are a small business, you may benefit from what is called a “long-tail keyword”. Take Sessions College as an example. AS a smaller design school, we see more benefit with the phrase “online graphic design college, as opposed to just “college.” Lastly, invest your SEO efforts into keywords and phrases that are expected to have the most impact. 
   
3. Create a high quality website. 

Other than quality content, take the following elements into consideration when developing your website. First, write a unique meta description. This can generate a high click through rate and increase traffic. Ensure you have original content, and that your website loads quickly. If you need help with this, check Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. If you have a landing page, watch your bounce rate, since a bounce indicates that the website didn’t provide the information a user was seeking.  

Photo by Dominika Roseclay

Off-Site SEO

1. Understand link profiles and link-building tactics.
   
   There are three different kinds of links: natural outbound links, paid links, and natural internal links. Natural outbound links are organic, outbound links that are relevant and fit naturally into an article. This is good for search engines, since it indicates that reputable websites are linking to one another. Paid links, as the name suggests, and paid for links that are found on ads. They will need to have a nofollow attribute applied. Natural internal links take a visitor to another location on the website. These links improve user experience and site navigation.
   
2. Understand popularity metrics.
   
   There are quite a few metrics that search engines use to determine a website’s popularity. Work to increase your backlinks from related and relevant websites. This should be done consistently to keep them fresh, since a high quality website is always receiving backlinks. If people post your website link to their social media profile, that will improve ranking as well.
   
3. Earn backlinks to your website.
   
   There are three categories of backlinks: editorial, manual, and manufactured. Editorial links are given by another webmaster due to liking the content of the website, and are the most difficult to gain. Visit backlinko.com to learn more about link building strategies. You can gain editorial links by producing videos, press releases, and networking. Manual links are easier to acquire than editorial links. You can gain manual links by submitting your website to directories, manage and create a business profile on websites like Google My Business, and share your website on social bookmarking and networking websites. Guest blogging is another way to gain manual links. Manufactured links are low quality and should be avoided. Examples include blog comments, forum signatures, free article directories, and creation of a secondary site.   

Things to Avoid

In his blog, “Why You’re Not Ranking on Google (And How to Fix It),” Neil Patel lists seven things that may be affecting your ranking. These include duplicate content, not having a Google My Business Page, disregarding social signals, failing to create consistent content, ignoring mobile friendliness, not indexing your website, and having slow website speed. 

Conclusion

By following the roadmap above, you’ll be able to increase the ranking of your website and drive organic traffic in no time. Remember increasing your ranking is a work in progress! Continually strive to stay relevant and fresh by releasing high quality content. Best of luck!   

Written by Kimberly O’Hanlon
Blog for MRKT584: Digital Marketing Platforms
Instructor: Nikki Brown
April 20th, 2022

References:

Draper, Stuart and Larson, Jeff. Digital Marketing Essentials. 2014. Copyright 2019 by Edify Publishing. 

How to Rank on Google. Moz. https://moz.com/how-to-rank

Patel, Neil. Why You’re Not Ranking on Google (And How to Fix It). Neil Patel. https://neilpatel.com/blog/rank-where-you-belong/