1. Write better website copy
It pays to take the time to research who your target audience is, and what language or sentences they use when searching for your business. An easy way to determine this is simply visiting google.com.au, and start typing your product or service descriptors into the search field. Google autofill will show you some of the most searched keyword strings.
This is an excellent way to determine how real people might be searching for you or your competitors. Writing website copy that uses this language can help you achieve a much more dominant position.
2. Get mobile ready
With figures from Cisco showing that mobile data traffic is growing at almost 60 per cent in Australia, it makes sense that your website should be easily accessed and navigated from handheld devices. In fact, Google has announced that websites that aren’t optimised for mobile will suffer in their rankings.
Many modern website designs already take this into account and can scale to any screen size, but if your website doesn’t look right on your device, it’s a good idea to take care of that.
3. Start blogging
One thing that has remained a consistently dominating factor for appearing in search more frequently, is content production. If you publish relevant content that your target market finds useful, you’ll encourage new and repeat visitors to your site. By adding more pages to your website, you’re also increasing the depth of your website, turning it into a library of information that will continue to serve you as long as your website is active.
Publishing content on a regular basis signals to Google your site is live and active, and the frequency of keyword material in your blog will have you ranking for keywords and sentences you didn’t even think of.
4. Leverage social
Having a Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or any other social media channel is good for nurturing relationships with your target audience, but it also serves as a signal to Google search that there’s real people behind the business, serving real people as customers.
More importantly, by generating content or other material that compels or incentivises people to share your content and talk about you on social networks, you’re proving to the world (and Google), that you’re in demand and relevant.
5. Don’t overthink it
It’s very easy to get caught up in the technicalities of SEO and forget why your website is there in the first place. While it’s important not to discount the hundreds of technical SEO requirements for greater rank opportunities (way too many to mention here) a much more overriding factor is how much value you provide to people that come across your website.
By simply providing top quality products or services, efficient conversion processes, clear communication and outstanding customer service, the resulting positive sentiment towards you will be splashed on social networks and review sites, making it easy for Google to reciprocate with a better rank.
