Stage 6: SEO & Search Result Focus

You may have heard of search engine optimization (or SEO), but what does that all mean? SEO is a fancy term for describing how your website performs relative to other similar websites (your competitors) when a person makes a search on a search engine (Google, Bing, etc.) If you are “improving your SEO”, that means you adjusting your website to appear closer to the top of a search engine’s search results. The first few search results receive a majority user’s attention and clicks, and if you aren’t on the first page of search results then most likely, they aren’t going to find you.

Before we dig deep into enhancing a web page to perform better in search results, it’s important to understand how the order of Google search results is determined. Google created an algorithm to determine a page’s “PageRank” score based on many variables. The search engine uses automated programs, referred to as spiders or crawlers, to index and read websites. When a search query is submitted to Google, the engine “searches” the internet for relevant pages that match the keywords and intent of the search to provide a lengthy list in order from most likely to what the user is looking for to least likely. Google won’t ever share this algorithm or confirm what weight each factor may be, but based on research and some broad public statements, people on the outside have begun to figure it out.

Now you may be wondering, what keywords or phrases do you want to include? This is entirely up to you! A good starting point would be to have clear and descriptive titles on each page and having the location in the first sentence. For example, on an auto insurance page, you could include Auto Insurance as a title and the first sentence may be, “At ABC Agency, we offer insurance coverage for your car, truck, van and any other automobile in southern Wisconsin (or include city) as we work with a variety of insurance carriers being an independent insurance agency.” There are a few different things to point out in this example. First, is that you do not want to just repeat keywords (auto insurance) over and over. It’s better to use synonyms such as car insurance or automobile insurance to capture a wider range of keywords and reduce the likelihood of keyword stuffing (excessively adding keywords to your website). The location, name of agency and insurance is also mentioned in that sentence to help brand the web page, help with location-based searches and keep insurance as a top keyword.

You likely know that a web page that answers the user’s question or includes the same “keywords” as the search query is going to show up higher. We will be talking a lot about keywords, so what are they and how can you include keywords on your website? Keywords are how many users search Google and the important part of a query. For instance, if Googling “What is an umbrella insurance policy?”, the important keywords would be “umbrella insurance policy” as that is the relevant and key part of the search. If you start including keywords on your webpages, it is more likely that your website will perform better. Keywords should naturally be included on your website just due to the nature and content of webpage content but you can boost your SEO by simply including keywords in titles, urls, and first sentences on pages.

A great activity for brainstorming keywords is to go to each page on your website and think what a user or customer may search. You may think of “auto insurance in [city, state]”, “low insurance rates for my car” or “Where to buy car insurance near me”. Now you identify the keywords in these phrases (auto insurance, city/state, low insurance rates, buy car insurance) and incorporate those into your content. However, still try to keep flow with your content and avoid awkward or odd-sounding sentences - Google is smart and will notice when you try to “cheat” the system.

For starters, the public knows a PageRank is heavily influenced on: • The frequency and location of keywords (titles vs in a body of text) on the web page • How long the web page as existed (more experienced web sites are more likely to be relevant) • The number of links to the webpage from other websites (the more links on the internet to the webpage, the more likely it is a truthful and relevant source)

However, this doesn’t even scratch the surface of the long list of factors. There is a long list of factors that can improve your rank which we will touch on in a little bit. The fact is that Google uses a ranking to give each web page a score based on the Google search query and what influences this score isn’t known for a fact but only derived from trial and error.

There are also factors that can decrease your score as well! If you are going to try to outsmart Google, it isn’t going to work. Some have tried this by making text blend in with the background (effectively hiding it), so you could add paragraphs of text to improve keyword matching or linking to a webpage numerous times on your own website, but Google can tell when it’s being tricked. now. If you aren’t sure, go to your website and look at your URL. If it starts with “HTTPS” then you have a secure site with an SSL certificate. If it shows “HTTP”, you don’t have an SSL certificate enabled or configured properly. This article explains in detail about HTTPS vs HTTP.

Is your website mobile friendly? If it isn’t it could be impacting your search results. With more and more users searching the web from a phone or tablet, it’simportant your website displays correctly on those devices. Website responsiveness means that regardless of screen-size that the webpage is fully-functional and readable. You can test if your website is responsive by going to your website and changing the window size of the browser.

In return for trying to “beat the system”, Google reduces your PageRank score. The best secret to creating a high performing website is to make it relevant, fully-functional and overall being the best website for the user.

In recent years, experts have been trying to figure out the most important factors as they continue to change. Now, some say user intent, webpage security, website responsiveness (mobile friendly) and user experience to name a few.

User intent is all about Google providing the most relevant and useful pages to give the user what he or she is looking for. Now, when you search Google, if you write a question, it will show an answer from a website without even having to click. Google also shows a list of products if you search for an item and even pulls up local businesses when you are making a search that could be location based such as, “best pizza place”. The best thing to add to your website is quality content that answers questions directly. Don’t try to rank for general topics, you want to rank on the specific questions users have.

Webpage security is important not only for the user, but also for search results and ranking. If your web page doesn’t have an SSL certificate, get one

To do this, click on the box in the top right corner between minimize and the “x”. Now click and drag the edges of the window and see if the website “responds” and changes based on the size of the window. Even make the window as small as possible and see if the website is user-friendly. You want to be sure that the website can be used without having to scroll left and right on the page. Another option is to use a free mobile-testing tool online. Google offers a mobile-friendly test for free here.

Just like the level of customer service you provide, the user experience on your website should be extremely positive and enjoyable. In order to tell the user experience on the website, Google uses indicators such as click-through rate, bounce rate and session duration. All of these metrics can be found on Google Analytics. The click-through rate is defined as the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions or number of times an individual is exposed to your link. The bounce rate is defined as the percentage of single-page sessions. This means the percentage of sessions in which the person left the website after only visiting the first page - the user didn’t click on any links or venture elsewhere on the website. Lastly, session duration is the total amount of time spent on one page with a longer session duration being better than a shorter duration as that implies the users are reading and interacting with your content.

As you can tell, Google has designed the search engine to show the highest-quality and most relevant pages first. You can put some effort and focus in putting keywords in titles and the first sentences on webpages but more importantly is to have a website that users enjoy going to. A website that has all of the right keywords but isn’t very popular may not show up on the first page because the bounce rate, click-through rate and session duration are all poor meaning that the page isn’t relevant to helping the user.

The true secret of SEO is maintaining a website that truly helps, assists and is what the user is looking for. In addition, here is a list of SOME of the other things Google looks for when determining search result order:

• Fast loading page • Content answers searcher’s query • Sitemap is accessible and indexed with Google • Links have ID text • All PDFs and other documents have “live text”/are not images • Titles and first sentences on pages include keywords • Web page is linked elsewhere/cited on other sites •Links describe the page they are going to, not just “Click Here” •Description tags have keywords • Content recency (new, updated content like blog posts) • Reading level of content (should be at a basic reading level) • All images have alt text (alternative text), descriptions, titles, captions and a relevant file name • Page doesn’t have too many links • Contact Us page on website • Terms of Service and Privacy Pages are accessible • Metatags with keywords • Using Google Analytics and Google Search Console • Repeat traffic • Location of user • Penalized for keyword stuffing and over-optimization

The Beginner’s Guide to SEO

For a complete walk-through of improving SEO on your website, read this detailed SEO Guide.

For a list of 200 (suspected) ranking factors on Google, click here. You did it!