Google SEO Guide. Google and other search engines are extremely successful in doing something that appears very simple – they match a user search with the most relevant websites.
Understanding this is the key to understanding basic website SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
The obvious question now is how does Google know what the right website for a particular search is?
The answer is a pretty simple concept, Google along with other search engines constantly crawls the internet reading the content of every website it finds. Using complex algorithms it stores metrics for each site such as loading speed, keywords, security, duplicated content, layout etc.
The magic happens when you enter your search query, such as “fitness studio in Dunfermline”. Instantly Google will check its metrics and provide you with a list of search results of websites containing words to match your search.
What if there is more than one fitness studio in Dunfermline? Who appears at the top of the list?
This is what SEO is all about. Much of the metrics that Google uses to understand your website must be correctly implemented within each website. If not Google may not understand your site, and therefore not promote you in the search rankings.
If the aim is to increase the ranking for selected search keywords then those words must be included in specific ways such as a webpage page title, the page slug (the URL), page metadata, picture meta, within the first paragraph, and 2-3 times within the body, etc. Google can understand this and can rank your website accordingly.
So that’s your Keywords done, right? Wrong…
You may have heard of the term “Keyword Strategy”. It refers to making sure your website is found by using the best keywords to match the highest trending searches. Doing keyword research for your business is essential, this is effectively looking at what people are searching for to better understand your audience. There are many tools for doing this.
So you set your keywords to “Fitness Studio in Dunfermline” and implemented this correctly within your page content, but you’re not getting many visitors – It could be the Keywords themselves, maybe people are no longer searching for “Fitness Studio in Dunfermline”, doing keyword research will give you metrics of all keywords and suggest alternatives, this could show a large number of people searching for “Dance lessons in Dunfermline”. Unfortunately changing keywords can be quite a lot of work, as it normally involves re-writing content, but very necessary if you want to be found online.
SEO isn’t just about keywords, it also includes monitoring, adapting content, getting your website listed with other websites (backlinks), correctly applying schema, along with technical and security management. In short, it’s why SEO agencies like us exist!
Thank you for checking out our basic Google SEO Guide, contact us for a quote to get your website found more easily, or for more information click here. Existing clients should visit the support portal for SEO requests.