How to Improve Your Rankings

20 Feb How to Improve Your Rankings

Search Performance

Google made it now easier than ever before to check out your website?s performance. Everyday new content on the web is created and Google is modifying its webmaster guidelines. As content is added and changed, ranking is affected, causing websites to change positions in search results.

To increase the likelihood of showing up in Google search results, you must follow these tips:

Is Your Site in Google Index?

To see if your site is still ranking with Google Search Results, search site:your domain. If your site is listed in search results, then it is included in the Google Index. Webmaster may say that your site is not currently in search results, but sometimes it’s a mistake and your site can still be there. If your site isn?t indexed, it may have been removed for violating Webmaster Guidelines. Do a Google search www.(yourdomain).com and if it ranks poor or isn?t in results, you may have violated Google rules for spam. Another reason can be that your site is new, and you need to notify Google by submitting a Sitemap and ensuring that your website is accessible to it?s spiders.

Allow Your Site to be Found and Crawled by Google

For Google to see updated pages, it starts the crawl process. It visits sites, and adds links to its list to crawl. Any bad links are noted under the Google crawl. Sometimes, Google has trouble finding these pages. You can check for crawl errors on the search console, and it will let you know pages it tried to crawl but couldn?t open. Your robots.txt file should be reviewed and tested for blocking Googlebots from URLs. URLs can also be blocked with meta tags. Also, you must check that your site structure is setup to be accessible, in order for Google to crawl your site. If your site is new, the new domain can make pages rank lower. Using 301 redirects can be helpful for this to redirect your users. A sitemap should be considered, even if you are indexed in Google, to show Google a map of your site?s content.

Allow Google to Index Your Site

Checking the index statistics on your site will help to determine if your site is in the Google index, and where it is. Your site?s structure should also be reviewed. All content should be text-based, as Google cannot read text inside images. It should be easily read by Googlebot and people.

Your Content Should be Relevant

The search queries page will let you know how people are getting to your site. This page will show you Google searched your site is in the most, and click through rates. This can show what users search, and how well you are performing. A low click through rate can mean that your content isn?t clear to people looking at your website. In search console, the HTML improvements page give information on site content, title tags and meta description. This can show in search results, giving you a higher chance of more visitors clicking through to your site. Having links to your site helps more people to learn about your business. This will help you appear more relevant to Google, and have your site ranked higher. As site filters are not always accurate, you may want to turn off safe search to see if you had content flagged. Explicit content will be removed from Google?s Safesearch. Finally, content that includes quality photos and videos can draw in more users. If you follow image guidelines, this should be a great way for your site to rank higher.
 
By following these rules, you will help to rank higher or find out why your site was not ranking in the first place. Since Google takes action against spam and duplicate content, it will be removed. Sometimes content can be demoted instead of completely removed. It is smart to be aware of your page rankings and how you appear to the outside world. By providing more relevant and reliable content, you will be ranked higher on Google in no time!