Reach Customers with Search Engine Optimization
Lesson 3 from: Reach Customers Online with Google Tools
Reach Customers with Search Engine Optimization
Lesson 3 from: Reach Customers Online with Google ToolsLesson Info
3. Reach Customers with Search Engine Optimization
Lessons
Lesson Info
Reach Customers with Search Engine Optimization
now that you understand a little bit more about the massive scope of the web and how google works to index all the information we can move on to. Talking about how to get your business to show up when people search for what it is that you offer. As I mentioned, google considers many factors when cataloging and ranking pages. That means there's more than one way that you can help your business appear on google and move up in the rankings. The first way your business might show up is to appear in what we call the organic or natural results down the center of the search results page. As shown, google builds these pages of results for every single search to deliver the most relevant results for that particular searcher. For example, the search results might look a little bit different for people searching from Saskatoon Canada and then people searching from Nashville Tennessee, you can see how the website for Trade Street Jam can appear in google search results. How does google decide what...
websites show and in what order there are more than 200 signals that google considers to determine which web pages should appear for which searches? Organic search results are different than paid search advertising. How high your site ranks in Organic search is truly a matter of your site being the most useful answer to the query entered by the searcher. That is what they're looking for on google. Now, you can just buy a better organic search ranking, You can put effort into optimizing your website to improve its visibility on google and other search engines. This is what's called search engine optimization or what you may have heard of. S E. O. I could do a whole presentation on sc Oh, but here's a quick overview. S E O refers to the techniques that improve your website rank in the google search results and attract higher quantity and quality website visits to grow your online presence. S E O is important when it comes to managing a website for your product service or brand. When consumers use search engines are typically looking for a specific product service or solution. Sometimes they want to be entertained, educated or reassured regardless they have a specific need or want that your website may be able to fulfill ranking in search results for particular keywords, topics and phrases can help you connect with your ideal customer People who are just getting started with S E. O. Have a tencent tendency to think that it's really complicated or that you have to have a background in tech to do it. But there are plenty of non technical things you can do to help your pages show up in search first, focus on content regularly published relevant or get original content. It should be useful and accurate. There's no rule of thumb. The more frequently you update your website, the more likely it will appear in the search engine results when you're writing content include keywords, potential customers would use to find your pages also organize your website logically and clearly labeled areas that leads visitors to more easily find what they're looking for and it helps google understand the content of your website. Every web page includes a title and description that's part of the code. Many content management systems like Wordpress or Wix offer the option to enter this text. If you have the option, make sure all of these title elements are descriptive, specific and accurate. If you're stuck on the relevant timely content part there is a free tool that can help with that google trends can help you to research content strategies and refine your marketing message for your website. It shows the relative popularity of different keywords searched on google over time The data is presented in a graph on a scale from 0 to 100 with 100 representing the peak search volume. If it has enough data trends can show a forecast of search volume related popular searches and what are called rising searches or searches experiencing significant growth. You can use it to compare the popularity of different words and phrases determines seasonality of different searches. See where searches happen geographically and see related searches. Here's an example of how a real business called T. Drops used google trends when researching how people in the U. S. Search for bubble tea. They learned that on the west coast, more people search for the word boba on the east coast, more people use the search bubble tea. That information can be incredibly useful when developing a constant content strategy for your website and for your advertising. For more insights like this, visit google dot com slash trends. The image and the screenshot of the google trends page on the mobile device shows a line graph comparing the interest over time for the terms boba and bubble tea. Now it's time to practice using your list of keywords. You should have a window open on your computer for google trends. If you don't you can open a new browser and visit HGTV dot c o slash trends enter the key words and phrases you would like to compare, narrow down the results may be by location, then adjust the date ranges to see how or if the results appear differently. Then you can explore related searches for more ideas of keywords you may be having considered. I'll give you about 30 seconds for this activity to go into Google Trends and have a little bit of a look. Mhm Yeah let's go over a few more technical things that can affect SEO first, make sure your website loads quickly, especially for people viewing your site on mobile devices. A slow site will encourage visitors to navigate away from it. You likely experienced this yourself and it also affects your search rankings. Second be sure that your website is easy to use and read no matter how visitors get there. Many websites are built with a responsive design that adapts to the type of device being used, for example, a mobile device or a tablet. There are two google resources that can help you with these google's test my site tool and the google search console. You can check the speed of your website by trying google's free test my site tool at G dot c o slash test my site. The test scores measure mobile speed or how long it takes the site to load on a phone. Keep in mind that it's not just the strength of the web connection that determines the mobile speed but also the elements on the web pages. After evaluating your site, the test generates a report with a list of specific suggestions that can help you optimize if you're unsure why your website is running slowly. The image shows the test my site tool on mobile, which says your mobile site speed is 2.3 seconds in the United States on a 4G connection. Next up google search console. This tool used to be called google Web master tools. Search console is important for search engine optimization because it helps you measure your site search traffic and performance fix issues and improving google search results. Search console is typically used by S. E. O. Specialists or marketers to monitor things like website traffic, optimize rank in google search results and make informed decisions about the appearance of your website in the results. The information in search console can be used to influence technical decisions for the website and do sophisticated marketing analysis in conjunction with other google tools like analytics, google trends and google ads. Even if you don't handle the technical details of your website, you should be aware of search console and what kind of information and offers you can access google search console at g dot c o slash search console. The image shown in the screenshot of the is a screenshot of the google search console on mobile. Now that we've discussed the basics of search engine optimization, let's take a step back and see if your website appears on the first page of google's results in a separate tab. Go to google dot com. Now think of a word or phrase related to your business, it could be the name of your business? Product name or the type of service you're offering. Do a search for that word or phrase on google and take a look at the results. Do you see your website? If you are not on the first page, you can click next at the bottom of the page to see if you're on additional pages. If you do see your site, how does it look in the results? Do you like the text being displayed? Is it accurate and compelling when you click on it does it take you to the appropriate page on your site. Now if your website does not appear in the results, what sites are showing up Instead, this is really great information to have because these are your peers competing to appear above you in search. Doing searches like this periodically can help you figure out what is and isn't working on your site. When it comes to organic search, you can start implementing some of the tips from this section of the workshop to help improve your website's chances of appearing in the organic search results. In the meantime, let's move on to the next thing you can do right now to appear on google.