Getting your website listed and visible on Google Search takes work. But it’s not mystical knowledge. Google itself will tell you exactly what you need to do.
SEO is really about deeply understanding your marketing strategy.
- know your target customer
- know your target customers’ problems
- know the likely questions they type into Google/Bing
Google has one really simple rule
To get consistently to the top of Google, you have to BE the page people are searching for, you have to answer the visitor’s question perfectly and precisely.
Tip: FAQ pages are a really good way to get exact questions into Google indexes!
Optimise your FAQ by using properly marked up with structured data. FAQ pages are valuable to organic performance.
Do I HAVE to pay an SEO expert?
Yes, there are real SEO experts out there. You will know them because they ask for access to your website, and they start by improving your website content. They help you define keywords, and set you up to measure your successes (and failures) with analytics.
99% of SEO experts only give advice. Some of it valid, some of it years out of date. It is VERY difficult to measure SEO success, and they rely on you paying them for at least 6 months before you realize that although you are getting lots of hit, you aren’t getting more customers, or newsletter signups, or even an improved Google rank.
Sadly, what these companies do is set up bots to visit your website. That inflates you figures. In one way, this CAN help your google rank better – Google gives extra points to popular sites. The moment you stop paying them, your hits go down. You panic, and sign another contract with them.
There is nothing stopping you from doing this for yourself. Ask friends to type your best search words, click on your link, and scroll down the page for at least 3 minutes. Yes, Google measures activity on a page these days. It’s how they find “cheaters”.
SEO Hacking – does it work
SEO “hackers” use “Black Hat” SEO uses tricks that WILL get you to page 1 really fast. But you will also attract Google’s attention. Within months your domain will be blacklisted.
Google hires some of the smartest people in the world, and it is very committed to staying the best search engine. It knows ALL the tricks, and will downgrade domains who use them.
Should I take out Google Ads?
Google says it doesn’t give priority to Google ad customers, but my experience is that Google quietly pushes their paying customers at least a little. If you are stuck on page 2, Google ads get you up to page 1. They can also boost your visitors, which boosts your page rank.
Is installing a WordPress plugin enough?
WordPress SEO plugins are tools to help YOU do the work of improving your Search Engine rank. They don’t do the work FOR you.
- The SEO plugin asks you for your keywords (so you need to already know them)
- The SEO plugin then check that your article is USING the keyword you said you wanted
- The SEO plugin might check the readability of your blog or plage. It encourages you to write in plain language, without long words and jargon.
- The SEO plugin might help you register your website with Google, Bing and other search engines every time to add a blog. That gets you see fractionally faster (trust me, Google will find you!)
- The SEO plugin might allow you to add Google analytics codes (which helps you measure performance
- The SEO plugin might help you register with Google Search, and track your search performance
All-in-all, an SEO plugin is a good idea and it WILL help you do the right things to get indexed and visible on Google. I prefer the WordPress plugin SEO Press, but there are many others.
I am not an SEO expert, but if you have questions or are concerned about promises made by an SEO guru, you are very welcome to contact me!
