Get Your Website in Shape
Let’s get real. Our old business paradigm got rocked to its core in 2020. From cafés and shops to freelance consultants, business websites suddenly took center stage from in-person experiences. How does your Google website ranking stack up against your competitors? If you want your business to get a boost in search results, give us a call. Our SEO pros have the expertise you need to tune up your website and bring more business to your (virtual) door.
Google Doesn’t Underestimate the Impatience of Web Users; Neither Should You
Why is a well-tuned website so critical to your ranking? Google got to be the search powerhouse that it is because it consistently delivers what you’re looking for, whether it’s an answer to a question or product information. While Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a critical role, it takes more than the right keywords to get you to the top of the rankings. Your site needs to be secure, responsive, and absolutely ready to roll the moment a user clicks the link on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
Think about it: how long do you stick around when you encounter a page that is slow to load (especially if you’re browsing on your smartphone)? Unless you’re so invested in the content of the page that you’re willing to wait for the information to eventually appear, you’re most likely going to click away after a few seconds. Google’s benchmark page speed is around three seconds.
Why should that bother Google and other search engines? Because linking to pages that won’t load erodes the trust people have in the search results they deliver. So, if Google’s crawlers encounter problems accessing your website, there’s a good chance that users will too. And that means your business will struggle to rank on the first couple of results pages.
Is Your Website Wheezing?
You can’t always tell just by visiting your website whether it’s performing optimally. While it’s an excellent idea for you and your team to frequently visit your website and on multiple devices, you may not recognize underlying issues that affect your website’s overall health.
These problems can range from non-optimized images to broken scripts or an external style sheet that was moved or deleted. These and other issues can stop Google’s crawler dead in its tracks or cause a potential customer to move on to the next search result when your page doesn’t display on their tablet or phone.
So How Can You Tell if Your Website is Functioning Optimally?
If you want to assess the overall health of your company’s website, there are several tools available that can provide a snapshot of everything that impacts your SEO, from linking to site performance. Most of these tools are free, though some may ask you to hand over information such as your email address and phone number.
Since your primary focus will be getting to grips with how Google views your site, let’s go straight to the horse’s mouth. Google offers a full suite of tools, called “Google Search Central.” These tools are free to use and are a great starting place for analyzing your website.
Google PageSpeed Insights is a robust tool that measures a web page’s performance on a mobile device and a desktop computer. Mobile searches have overtaken those performed on desktop devices. Therefore, it’s essential to know how your pages perform, not just in terms of layout but also how quickly content might be displayed using cellular data.
Unlike Search Console, you can analyze any URL, so you’re troubleshooting at a more granular level. If you’ve identified a page on your website that should be performing better in Google search results, drop the URL to the page into the search bar and click the Analyze button. In about a minute, you’ll get a detailed report that includes:
- How long a user waits before the first piece of content (image or text) becomes visible
- How long it takes for the largest block of content to become visible
- Cumulative Layout Shift: how long content on your page stays stable before another page resource loads, causing your content to shift on the page
PageSpeed Insights also offers suggestions to optimize your page(s), so it will load faster. And since you can run this on any web page URL, you can compare your results to one of your competitors to see how your site’s efficiency stacks up against the competition.
Google Search Console measures the overall health of your website. It’s different from PageSpeed Insights in that you need to be the owner of the property (website) to use this tool. You’ll start by adding a “property” (your website). Once you submit your property, you’ll get a file with some code that you need to add to your website to verify that it is, in fact, your property. Once your website property is verified, you’ll get a trove of information about your site’s overall performance.
HubSpot Website Grader is powered by Google Lighthouse, the same tech that PageSpeed Insights. Enter your website and email address, and in just a few seconds, you’ll get a site grade, along with insights you can use to improve your score. You can learn more through HubSpot’s course offerings.
If you have the staff time to dedicate and the budget for a subscription, Moz Pro is the Swiss Army Knife of website analysis. In addition to its massive collection of tools, reporting, and resources, it uses its own web crawler to assess up to 3,000 links on any given URL. Pro plans (other than a 30-day free trial Moz does not offer a free plan) start at $99/month, which can take a big bite out of your marketing budget. Bear in mind that to get the most out of your subscription, you should dedicate a substantial amount of staff time to research, analyze, report, and execute the tasks necessary to optimize your digital marketing assets.
Drowning in Alphabet Soup? We’ve Got a Rescue Team Ready to Help
Perhaps you got curious and tried out some of these tools, only to feel like you were drowning in an alphabet soup of SEO, CLS, FID, and LCP. And maybe the idea of trying to find the time to sort through that analysis made your head spin.
We completely understand.
The team at Media Caffeine is fluent in SEO and all things related to it. Give us a call, and we can walk you through the process of using any of these resources to analyze a web page or your entire site. We’ll explain the terminology behind the acronyms and why these metrics are essential to your Google website ranking. You’ll get prioritized, actionable steps that you can take to optimize your site. And we’ll even format the assessment so that the information is easy to communicate to other stakeholders.
What Comes Next?
Now that you’ve analyzed your website’s overall health, here are the critical next steps you need to take to boost your Google website ranking.
Develop your keyword strategy.
This is the springboard for lifting your website higher on the search results page. What words do you expect people to use to find your business? Think in terms of your product or service (ex: “camera” or “photographer”) but keep in mind these “short-tail” keywords are very competitive and difficult to rank for.
Consider “long-tail” keywords that are easier to rank for, such as “camera store open Sunday” or “pet photographer.” And don’t forget your geo-tags, so the right people in the right location can find you (ex: “camera store in Baltimore” or “dog photographer in Charlotte, NC”). And keep in mind this isn’t a “one and done” deal. Your team should constantly be researching, analyzing, and adjusting your keywords to drive the right customers to your website.
Create landing pages. You need someplace to use all of those keywords, right? Create a library of landing pages that search engines AND customers will love. Focus the subject of your landing pages on a selection of your keywords and sprinkle them throughout your content. Make sure you avoid “keyword stuffing.” Keyword stuffing is the practice of taking your list of keywords and jamming every one of them into your copy. Not only is it awkward and off-putting for potential clients to read, but it can also get your page booted out of the search results. Think of keywords as a seasoning for your page. You want enough to add flavor, but you don’t want to overwhelm the rest of the dish…uh, page.
Develop your linking strategy. Now that we’ve whetted your appetite, let’s E-A-T. To Google, E-A-T means Expert, Authoritative, and Trustworthy. This is the trifecta you’re aiming for when you want your site to rank high in the search results.
How do you get there? By developing an intelligent linking strategy where other sites link to yours. Why does Google consider these “backlinks” important to your ranking? Because each backlink to your website is considered an endorsement. The more your site is endorsed by other sites, the more trustworthy and authoritative you look. But before you run around the web asking administrators to link back to your site, you need to consider the company you keep.
Websites that link back to you should also have the characteristics of being expert, authoritative, and trustworthy. If you’re getting links from questionable sites, Google may determine that your website isn’t credible. A strong linking strategy takes as much research and analysis as your keyword strategy, plus you have to approach potential link partners carefully. Ideally, you’ll have one or two team members who can focus on link building to maintain consistency in strategy and messaging.
Developing a keyword and linking strategy and creating high-quality content for your website takes a lot of work that requires dedicated personnel and a digital marketing expert’s guidance. Mistakes in these areas can set your website ranking efforts back. The process of correcting these mistakes is even more time-consuming. Our SEO professionals are here to help you get it right the first time and support you when you need to reassess your SEO strategy.
Does Your Website Need a Fitness Coach?
With many shops and services being forced to switch to online-only or minimal in-person visits, your Google website ranking is going to be more critical than ever in 2021 and beyond.
If your website is out of shape and having trouble climbing up in website rankings, give us a call. The team at Media Caffeine has the experience and expertise you need to sort out your SEO strategy. With our team working with you side-by-side, your site will leap in rankings and deliver the right customers to your website. Take a look at the services we offer, then schedule your consultation.