Anyone who wants to be successful online must also be found by their target group . 86% of all search engine users visit Google to look for what they want to find. For most search terms, search results are displayed page by page, in which you can pick out what suits you. Most of them only look at the first page and the first few search results.
So the best way to increase traffic for your website is to appear higher on the search results list in Google search results. What do you have to do to get a good Google ranking ?
The Google algorithm
Google’s job is to find exactly what its users are looking for . With the thousands upon thousands of websites that we find online, it is impossible to manually check pages for every potential search query to see whether the content on them matches the search query. For this purpose, Google has developed an algorithm and scanner to automate this process.
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So-called crawlers are bots that collect and archive the content of websites .
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The algorithm then examines the resulting index to decide what is valuable and what is not.
To do this, the algorithm must first be taught what is good and what is bad content. How effective this is has improved over the years. In the past, techniques of this kind led to websites repeating key words as often as possible on their pages or lined up as many different key words as possible in order to trick Google. This type of spam is prevented today.
However, it is not officially known which characteristics Google uses to decide what is good content. However, marketers have used trial and error to develop successful methods of influencing the algorithm. This practice is called SEO (Search Engine Optimization), or search engine optimization .
Search engine optimization strategies
Keywords
Keywords are keywords that Google searches for in texts. This can be, for example, the title of texts, their content, the meta title or the meta description (ie the information that is displayed in Google rankings). It’s about using the best words that match the customer’s search query. Where and in what quantity the keywords appear also has an influence on whether your page is rated by Google as a good answer to the customer’s question.
If you sell a service, such as a cleaning company, it makes sense to use word combinations such as ‘cleaning company Munich’ or ‘cleaning company costs’. It helps to imagine which phrases you would use yourself to find the product you want to sell. The page that best answers the question that was asked is shown higher on the list and is likely to be clicked.
There are different keyword variants , depending on what you are offering. A few of these are:
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Informational Keywords | “ How do I find a good cleaning company ” would be a title that gives customers the information they are looking for on a topic.
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Brand Keywords | Customers who want to find a brand search for their name, e.g. B. “ Cleaning company Meier “.
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Commercial Keywords | With these there is already the intention of the customer to want to buy something. “ Hire a cleaning company ” would be a search query and keywords that respond to it.
How to properly use keywords is a science in itself. If you want to be successful with this, you are best off with SEO experts to get advice or hire them for SEO.
Tools like the Keyword Planner, Google also help to identify it, which keywords and which are less often used in searches for your product often. On the one hand, you can see which words to use because they are often searched for , but also which niches are not yet covered. For keywords that are already facing great competition
added value
There is no point in tricking customers with the right keywords if they cannot find what they are looking for on the website. Therefore, you should only use this strategy to generate attention for a suitable service .
In order to be able to assess this, Google also measures, for example, the length of time visitors spend on your site. If it is clicked on frequently, but left again immediately, that is not a good sign.
Tip: Multimedia elements help to keep customers on a website longer.
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Those who give the right answer to a customer’s question will satisfy them and are more likely to be employed and recommended by them once and again.
Offering good content has another advantage: content that has real added value is more likely to be shared by customers and other websites. A good advisory article on what makes a good cleaning company may be picked up and linked by other websites on the same topic or simply shared because a customer wants to recommend the service to others. This type of positive word of mouth has an impact on the next SEO strategy.
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Google creates networks within the indexes of all available websites. You put together groups of web pages that link to each other.
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Basically, the content of a website is perceived as more valuable if many other websites contain links to it, the so-called backlinks.
However, this only works if these websites are rated as “trustworthy” by Google . The association with harmful websites leads the algorithm to assume that your website is also suspicious.
If your page now contains valuable information on a topic, which is used by news sites in articles that refer to the source, this is a positive boost.
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Google sees that many websites find the content of your page helpful. The more trustworthy these sites themselves are, the better the content on your site has to be according to Google’s logic.
One way to maintain that reputation is to produce really good content, and frequently. Another is the use of SEO firms to help with link building . Caution!
If you obviously buy advertising without added value in the form of links on other pages, Google can punish this by blocking the website.
Page structure
Not only the text on websites is important. Google also checks the page structure and code framework of your page . Without any knowledge of how the website is structured, you won’t get very far. Here are a few important factors:
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You have to make sure that you see the Google crawlers ever have allowed , to visit and add them to the index . The words NoIndex and NoFollow in the page source code are signs that the crawlers are not allowed to index the website and follow links on it.
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You have to make sure that your website loads stable and fast . You are probably more deterred by a page that has to load forever, because it looks unprofessional.
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Make your website usable on mobile devices too . Responsive web design ensures that it can be used in all formats and is not just unsightly scaled to fit on the mobile phone screen.
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If the HTML code of the website is unnecessarily large and ‘untidy’, this is rated as negative, because disturbing or damaging code fragments could be hidden there.
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Do not use image files that are too large and give them image descriptions in the alt tags . Again, the correct keywords should appear, even if most customers will never see the text. After all, it is about being found by Google analyzes that also search through texts that are not displayed .
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The titles of URLS are also significant. Cryptic addresses with numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters, where you cannot tell what content you are led to, are negative. Meaningful permalinks also help to better remember the website address.
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It is also important that the contents of all sub-pages of the website differ and that there are no multiple copies. A comprehensible structure is valuable. In an online clothing shop, the pages and sub-categories should be staggered so that you can always find your way around. Shopname.de/Männer/Hosen/Shorts would be one of these good runs, which in the best case can be found not only in the page structure, but also in the URL .
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An XML sitemap in which you can Google list your pages and their structure ensures that all of your content can be found.
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If you have categories and sub-categories, you should wait until you have enough filler material . Google rates a thin spread as negative. If you open a new category, you should have at least three items of content to hand on subpages .
Conclusion – a good Google ranking
As you can see, getting a good Google ranking is not an easy task . There are a number of factors to consider and always new knowledge about the rules of the algorithm. This is only a small overview of the methods that now fill entire textbooks. It is not for nothing that search engine optimization has become a field of its own offered by web marketing companies. If you want to position yourself well in the search results of search engines, you should think about using their services.
A good approach is to put yourself in the shoes of Google and the searchers . Google’s job is to show customers what they are looking for in the best possible way. To help them do this, your website needs to be easily discoverable by Google and match the factors that the algorithm is trained on.
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These are designed to find a trustworthy page that contains exactly the content that better meets the needs of the search query than the competition.
This requires a clear structure, good content and the right keywords . In this way, Google can quickly find your website in the index of all websites and use an analysis to recognize that the composition of text and keyword set is probably a good answer to the search query.