Why Am I Still Not Ranking on Google?
So you just re-designed your website. You went from a boring, outdated content-heavy website, to a flashy, modern business machine! You’ve spent all this money and you expect to rank in the first spot, on the first page of Google when people search for your industry. So, why are you nowhere to be found?
Frustrating, isn’t it?
Websites built with an SEO focus
Even the best looking website can fall to the crushing weight of online marketing. Sure, a good looking website is definitely a trust-factor and helps to improve conversions, but how can you get conversions if you have no users? Many web businesses will tell you they can build a great website, but don’t know anything about Search Engine Optimization. A good website looks beautiful and functions well, but a GREAT website does all that and more. There are plenty of techniques NOBL Web uses to help you rank when your new website launches.
Page titles and Meta Descriptions
This is the most basic of all SEO principles. Google has to understand what your page is. If your page title is “Home”, Google has no idea what that is. If your page title is “Wholesale Beauty Supplies | Body Cream | 4oz.”, then it’s pretty clear to Google that this page is a wholesale beauty products company selling a 4oz. cream. If you don’t know what page titles are, take a look at the image below. It’s what shows up on your browser tab. That is the title that Google will list in the search results.
Meta descriptions are not as helpful to Google as page titles are, but they help the user make a decision when browsing the search results. It’s not an absolute must for successful SEO, but it helps!
Headings such as h1, h2, h3
Headings have to describe what the page is about, or what your company does. The main heading, the h1 tag, should be similar to your SEO page title, and clearly describe what the page is about, or what you do. For example, on the homepage of a clay court Tennis facility in Ottawa, your main title, or h1 tag could read something like: “Ottawa’s Only Not-for-Profit Indoor and Outdoor Clay Court Tennis Facility”. That way we check every main keyword, which gives Google a better understanding of what you want to rank for.
Secondary headings such as h2 and h3 can then be used to describe features of a product or business, or help break content down by section, such as we did in this blog post! This helps Google understand even further.
Speed Optimization
Does your web designer or web company know what an .htaccess file is? Do they know how to leverage browser caching, or enabling .gzip compression? Do they know how to enable Keep Alive on a server? This may sound like mumbo-jumbo, but NOBL Web understands all the technical aspects of speeding up a website. Why is this so important? Google would prefer if your site fully loads between 1 and 4 seconds. Sometimes that may not be entirely realistic, but it is a major ranking factor nowadays. Having too much fluff or too many cutting-edge animations can actually hurt your rankings.
Content is King!
Yes, content is king. That means that quality content that answers your user’s questions is very important! Google does not want to be caught ranking a crappy website that has poor content just because the developer used all the classic SEO tricks. Yes, those tricks are important, but ONLY if you have good content that people want to read. How does Google know what is good content? Well, we don’t exactly know, but we can only assume it’s some sort of super artificially-intelligent computer! Just kidding (or am I?)! But seriously, their algorithm is very smart and it can track how people interact with your site. To start, remember that a good number of words to have per page is somewhere between 400 and 700 (at least).
More SEO Techniques
There are too many tips and tricks to list them all here, but at NOBL Web, we don’t just build websites, we build SEO-focus business tools that will help your business grow! Need help ranking? Contact NOBL Web today!