Written by Hannah Smith – Marketing Student at Oregon State University

You’ve been working at building a website for your company, but you still aren’t getting as much interaction from consumers as you were hoping. By having a website, Google takes into account many factors that affect your website’s search engine rankings when consumers are using Google. Here are a few things you can do, to improve your website’s rankings.

Choose Relevant Keywords and Phrases

The first way to have your website show up in more search results is to have relevant keywords and phrases. Keywords are words that people use when they use Google’s search box. The words that companies associate with their businesses or products will show up in a consumer’s search results, if the keywords are relevant to the search made by the consumer. Phrases are longer versions of keywords, that may also be typed into a Google search box.

If you have a small business, or if you’re just getting started, it may be more beneficial to use long tail keywords that are more relevant to your page, instead of short keywords. For example, if you have a bakery and you’re selling pastries, instead of using the word “pastry” as a keyword, you could say “vegan pastries” or “gluten-free donuts”. These are phrases that are more specific to the actual products that you are trying to sell.

It is also important where your keywords are used. You don’t want your keywords and phrases all over the website, taking over the content that you are trying to show your customer. The overall percentage that your key words should take up on your webpages is only about 3%-5% of the page. The best page locations to place your keywords so that they are relevant include:

• The URL
• The title of your webpage
• Headers throughout your webpage
• The main content of your webpage
• Within image alt text or file names
• Within your hyperlinks, or anchor text

Choosing relevant and competitive keywords and placing them in the correct locations will help you improve the overall ranking of your website, along with my next few tips.

Provide Quality Content

Another large factor within Google’s search algorithm ranks the quality of your webpage. Google looks at how original and fresh your webpage content is, how much content is provided, and how reliable the information is. All of these things affect how a consumer uses the information within your webpage, and whether Google thinks your webpage matches the consumer’s original search or not.

Not only does Google pay attention to your webpage’s content, but it also looks at how often your webpage is linked to other webpages. If someone else has provided links to your products and shown that your products are popular, Google’s algorithm will notice that. This could include links within social media sites, blogs, local business profiles or directories.

Depending on how good your content is, Google also tracks the bounce rates of your webpage, and how effective your landing pages are. So, if you have good quality content, and your users don’t immediately leave the page, you’ll have better rankings.

Make your Webpage Compatible for Mobile Devices

Have you ever visited a website on your phone, and not been able to navigate the webpage very well? Maybe links and buttons were too small, and your big fingers kept clicking on the wrong thing? This type of experience frustrates users and will cause them to click off of your website. You may have a really strong webpage that has been designed for a desktop, but you are losing attention that you could have from mobile users.

Another way to improve your webpage’s rankings is to make your site fully compatible for mobile users. This might involve creating a whole new webpage, specifically designed for mobile devices. This will help create ease of use for your customers and keep them on your webpage longer.

Google’s algorithm has been updated to remove sites from a consumer’s mobile search, if a webpage is not fully compatible for a mobile user. This means your webpage wouldn’t show up in the search results at all. So, making a mobile version of your webpage could definitely improve your search rankings.

References:

Digital Marketing Essentials, Larson and Draper, Chapter 4: SEO (On-Site)

Digital Marketing Essentials, Larson and Draper, Chapter 5: SEO (Off-Site)

The Step-by-Step Guide to Improving Google Rankings Without Getting Penalized: https://neilpatel.com/blog/improve-google-rankings-without-getting-penalized/

10 Ways to Improve Search Engine Ranking (SEO): https://www.usdigitalpartners.com/10-ways-to-improve-search-engine-ranking/

Written by Hannah Smith – Marketing Student at Oregon State University

You’ve started a website for your company, but you’re not seeing the results you hoped for by creating the website. How can you get your website visitors to stay engaged and make the conversion that you’re looking for?

The first thing you need to know about different types of landing pages. There are five different types of landing pages, each with a different purpose in mind. The five types of landing pages are; Single-Product landing pages, Multi-product landing pages, Lead Generation Landing Pages, Subscription Landing Pages, and Single-purpose landing pages, 

Each type of landing page will serve a different purpose for what type of conversion that you are looking for. So how do you use a landing page to generate the most conversions on your website? Here are five ways that you can increase your landing page conversions.

Have a Unique Value Proposition

When potential customers are visiting your website, what are you wanting them to get out of it? How do you want them to remember your company? A Unique Value Proposition is the values that your company holds over other companies, and what you’re offering. Why should consumers pick your company over another? Your landing page should include a statement that shows that your company is unique and the best option for what they are looking for. This step will help you develop a landing page that keeps your potential customers engaged in looking at your website, and potentially making that conversion to a regular customer. 

Have a Simplified Design and Layout of Your Website

An important part of having a good landing page is a simplified design. You want what’s called “Conversion-Centered Design” where the design of the website is completely centered around getting the customer to make the conversion that your company is looking for. The key is to create a design that provides ease of use and is a familiar layout. Look at successful retail websites such as Amazon or your favorite well-known brands. They will most likely have a very similar layout to each other that provides familiarity to the consumer when navigating through the website. The last thing you want to do is to create a new, crazy and complicated design that the customer will have no idea how to navigate. 

Create Your “Call to Action”

A “Call to Action” is the point on your landing page where you want your potential customers to gravitate towards. On online retail sites, a call to action may be the “Add to Cart” button on a single-product landing page. In this example, the “Add to Cart” buttons are usually the boldest button on the screen, attempting to convince the viewer to purchase the item. You want your call to action to be clear and to the point. You wouldn’t want your potential customers confused about where to proceed with a purchase or action. If you want a successful conversion, you need a call to action on every webpage throughout your website to help navigate your customer.

Provide Trust Symbols

If you have a small business, potential customers probably don’t know much about your company and may be skeptical of your website, and whether it’s safe to make a purchase or not. One way you can gain the trust of your customers is to add trust symbols to your website. Trust Symbols are images or symbols that provide legitimacy to your site. This can be as simple as including linked icons to your company’s social media pages, adding photos of customers with your products, positive reviews from customers, positive publicity from local businesses or newspapers, or brand recognition awards. Adding elements such as these throughout your website and specifically, your landing page will help gain the trust of the potential customer, and help them make the conversion to a regular customer of your company.

Test Your Website and Landing Page

If you feel like you’ve been making changes to your website and you’re not sure what is truly increasing your landing page conversions, consider doing an A/B test. An A/B test is when you make a change on your website, and call that the “B” version of your landing page and your original version is the “A” landing page. Then you perform a randomized experiment where some consumers visit the “A” page, and others visit the “B” page. From there, you can see which modifications to your website perform the best based on conversions after visiting your website.

Citations:

Unique Value Propositions – https://unbounce.com/conversion-glossary/definition/unique-value-proposition/

A/B Testing – https://vwo.com/ab-testing-3/

Digital Marketing Essentials, Larson and Draper, Chapter 1: Digital Marketing Foundations

Digital Marketing Essentials, Larson and Draper, Chapter 2: Web Design (Desktop and Mobile),