Published on the 13/03/2017 | Written by Sharron Martin

Six tips to get your website on page one…

After months of work OneClick has ranked for some of our key words and phrases on page 1 of Google. Some of our goals are still a work in progress but we are keen to share what we have learned so that you can do the same. According to Ben Gomes at Google, there are more than 200 separate factors involved in the search algorithm. This means that each individual website is assessed by more than 200 different criteria to decide where to list it in the search engine results page (SERP). Don’t let this put you off. It is still possible for a small to medium sized business to rank well with Google without paying a fortune in Adwords or expensive SEO consultants. Here are our top six SEO Tips for 2017.

Content
Content is still as important as ever. Feed your website with key word rich content on a regular basis. The key word here is regular. This keeps your website up to date and display’s ‘a behavior pattern of expertise’ in your subject area. This is something Google looks for, incremental data, added over a period of time, with similar characteristics. In other words, people writing about the same topic, multiple times, over an extended timeframe. The basic premise of any search engine is to supply relevant, recent, content to the person looking for the information. Adding fresh content regularly means your website will be the most recent, relevant response to the search query.

Pick Your Battles
Getting your website on page 1 is a lot more achievable if you target a specific location. For example, ‘Ecommerce Websites Auckland’ is a much more realistic goal for OneClick than ‘Ecommerce Websites (everywhere)’. Here are our tips for local SEO:

• Add a Google Map with a marker pin to your Contact Us page.
• Add a company page on Google My Business
• Company name, address and phone number should be visible on every page
• Company name address and Phone Number should be formatted correctly
• Frequently insert your location name in your content
• Add local reviews

Optimise for RankBrain
Due to the fact that there are so many Google searches now (3.5 billion per day), Google uses artificial intelligence (AI) ‘Rank Brain’, to help filter out the right results to the queries. In simple terms, imagine that your target customers are asking questions about your product. Can you integrate my eCommerce website to my ERP system? To anticipate this, you can list these questions and prepare answers for them. FAQ’s are an excellent way to do this. Adding an FAQ page to your website will optimize your website for RankBrain. Case studies of your work and blog content can also be effective here.

Mobile
Most people have heard about this by now but in case you haven’t, mobile sites are prioritised in search results. The reason for this is that there are now more Google searches on mobile devices than desktops. All other factors being equal, then mobile friendly sites will display first. If your website isn’t mobile friendly, then organic rankings will be very difficult to achieve. A mobile friendly or responsive website is no longer optional but necessary.

Page Load Speed
Page loading speed is a ranking factor. Check your website page load time. If you are not sure how to do this then you can test it here or ask your website company to do it for you. If the test highlights speed problems, then ask them to identify these and eliminate them. These can often be easily fixed such as resizing oversized images and suddenly your website is a lot more accessible.

Social Media
Not every business has an active online customer base and social media is not a blanket solution for every company. In saying that, social media can be a great source of new traffic for your website and given that Twitter has a relationship with Google and Tweets are now ranking components it might be worth considering having a Twitter account. Obviously, this would only be of benefit after you have identified that your customer base is active on Twitter and it is worth putting in the effort to develop your hashtags and maintain the account.

These are OneClick’s top tips to increase your organic (free) search engine rankings on Google. For any business paying for expensive Google Adwords, strategic content loading and minor edits on a regular basis can get your website on page 1 for free and result in big savings for your business.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR//
Sharron Martin is an Account Director & Digital Strategist at website and ecommerce integrator OneClick. Sharron has an extensive background in technology and has been the project lead in many successful digital projects. Sharron has experience in delivering websites, eCommerce, and digital marketing strategy plans for different sized projects for local and international organisations.