How to Get My Website on Google
So your business is ready to launch. All that’s left is to market it and ensure that online visitors find you. Sounds easy, but it takes a lot of time and effort to get listed in Google and attract those visitors to your site and keep them there, and even more to get them to buy. While the “what” is rather time-consuming, the “how” is rather simple.
How to Get My Website on Google
There are basically 5 steps to getting listed on Google:
1. To get listed in Google, build a really great website.
The first step to getting listed on Google is to build the best website possible. Although easy navigation is key, good web design is about more than just how the site looks. Search engines love order. A well-organized site allows Google to find information on your site quickly and easily. Keep Flash to a minimum. While it looks cool, it slows navigation and will hinder your site from being found by the search engines. Also, make sure you build a sitemap of your website. This is important for submitting your site to Google and other search engines. Whether you’re using a Content Management System (CMS) to build your website or another technology, ensure that it’s easy-to-use, which is important for refreshing content–another important step in the rankings game.
2. Go for keyword phrases that resonate with your target audience.
Content creation should always start with keyword research. Begin by identifying the most obvious keywords and get progressively granular. The basic keywords, or “short tail” keywords are ones anybody would use to begin a search, such as “cars” for buying a car or “real estate” for buying a house. Gradually drill down and find keywords that are more specific to your business. Start stringing together phrases, or “long tail” keywords. Be as specific to your business as possible as long tails have a better chance of helping Google attract customers who are knowledgeable, motivated and ready to pay for your product or service. When you search for keywords, keep in mind how you search the Internet–putting phrases in quotation marks, using “and” and “or”–it will help you identify the best words to find your site.
Note: Your most basic keyword (i.e.) the short tail that will cast the widest net and capture your biggest audience, should be included in the URL of each page of your website, as well as the metatag description and keyword sections, the first header of the landing page and the first few sentences of your content.
3. Write really great content.
A good website is only as good as it’s content. Content not only attracts and retains customers, it also attracts and retains search engine love.Marketing on the Internet is more about educating and sharing information than selling. It’s a soft sell, not a hard sell. As we’re sure you’ve heard, Google punishes those who stuff content with a lot of keywords–especially when those keywords are more about ranking than the subject at hand. The tone of your content should be conversational with the objective of educating visitors. Focus on the benefits of your product or service rather than the features. Think in terms of helping the customer rather than selling to them.Pay attention to your headings. They not only help break up your content and make it easier to read, but search engines search them first looking for keywords. Hierarchy is important. Your first heading, or H1, should contain your heaviest hitting keywords, the next heading, H2, the next heaviest, etc. Internal links are important, too. Search engine bots or spiders are not able to sort through menu items and lengthy text; however they do pick up on internal links. You can cross reference various pages in your site back to each other to build the links and thus SEO.Each page should contain its own subject. This not only makes your site easier to navigate, but also helps the search engines match targeted customers to the right places on your site.Finally, refresh your content often, and refresh it again. Like tigers on the hunt, search engines are hungry for fresh meat.
4. Submit your website to Google, et al.
While Google offers an excellent step-by-step process to help webmasters submit a site, submitting a website to it is not as easy as it looks. It requires a sitemap of your website, which contains URLS for every page of your site, formatted with an XML extension. To be effective, the process requires submission through a webmaster portal, which is time consuming and complicated. If time equals money, this is best left to a professional. However you choose to do it, please don’t miss this important step. Also, be sure to upload the site map to your website’s root directory.
5. Monitor your analytics.
Steps 1 through 4 mean nothing if you don’t monitor your results. Analytics allow you to see how many people have visited your site, how long they stayed, what pages they visited and a host of other metrics that will help you hone your online campaigns based on visitor behavior. While analytics software is available everywhere–even in your CMS–we’re pretty partial to Google Analytics, which is synched with Google Adwords and Adsense, which just makes the whole process easier.If you’re interested in hearing more about How to Get First On Google Search and other search engines and how to get more traffic to your website, please contact us today.P.S. You’re also going to need to build links back to your site. But that’s a whole other post…
Author Bio: Machus Corp., A technology solutions company based in Coppell, Texas, provides SEO services, Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing Services, Pay Per Click, Web Design and Development Services.
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