7 Quick And Simple Steps To Rank First In Google And Grow Your Sales On Autopilot
Jan 12, 2023Ready to ditch social media and invest in a marketing channel that is going to grow your business.
Enter Search Engine Optimisation - a proven method for getting your website to position one on Google so you can attract an audience to your website that is searching for exactly what you offer and ready-to-buy.
Believe it or not, your website won't magically appear in Google, let alone in the top position unless, you take the right steps to make it happen.
Search Engines like Google use algorithms to rank websites in order of what they deem is the best result for a user's search.
What's unique about the Google algorithm compared with the likes of Instagram is that we know what boxes we need to tick to get results, thanks to a whole bunch of testing by SEO experts.
And when these boxes are ticked, it can deliver interested buyers to your website, every day of the week (as long as you have a product people want).
You can't outsmart search engines and wing your SEO but you can do what they ask and you're basically guaranteed traffic.
And the surprising factor to many business owners is that it’s really not as difficult or techy as they think.
We’re in 2023.
This means there is enough intelligent software out there that simplifies the entire process and tells us exactly what we need to fix or implement on a silver platter A.K.A Google Analytics, Google Search Console or SEMrush to name a few.
In this blog, I am sharing 7 quick and simple steps to implement SEO today and grow your traffic, sales and money in the bank on autopilot.
If you’re ready to level up your SEO in 2023 and beyond, here they are:
1. CHECK GOOGLE IS CRAWLING AND INDEXING YOUR SITE
Step one is to check Google has found your site and is crawling it so that you know it’s being indexed in their library ready to show the next person that searches for your chosen keyword.
The simplest way to do that is by typing site: then your domain name into the Google search bar. For example I would search site:thedigitalexchange.co
Check the number of results showing roughly matches the number of pages, posts and products you have on your site. You can also go through the Google Search results pages and check there is a result for almost all pages on your site. It isn’t always exact, but it will give an indication of whether your website is being crawled properly.
2. SMUSH ALL WEBSITE IMAGES AND VIDEO FILES BEFORE UPLOADING THEM
Don’t underestimate the value of compressing your images, especially when optimising for mobile. Site and page speed is a crucial ranking factor by search engines so it’s imperative to get it right.
Visual assets help retain your visitors, but when they are too large, they hinder the User Experience (UX). This causes visitors to bounce out and head to one of your competitors sites. This indicates to search engines like Google that you result wasn’t a good fit, decreasing the likelihood of them showing your website again for that same keyword search.
As a rule of thumb, aim for a page load speed of three seconds. Use a tool like Pingdom’s Website Speed Test to find out where yours sits. If your website is running slow, use a compression tool like Google’s Squoosh tool, aiming to keep images under 300kb. Most website companies come with a guide on how to best upload media files for site and speed optimisation too.
3. MAKE A LIST OF CONTENT TOPICS AND FIND RELATED KEYWORDS
Your website covers a list of topics including the products, service or programs you offer and important information about them. Take the ten most popular and profitable pages, posts or products and write a list of keywords you believe your audience is searching to find them.
To help generate keywords ideas, type a keyword in Google and see what suggestions or related keyword phrases come up or use a tool like Semrush's Keyword Magic Tool.
Next, you’ll need to select the right keyword for your business for each page of your site. If you’re a smaller business, your best bet is looking for mid-to-high volume keywords with a low difficulty score. This means they’ll be relatively easy to target yet have a decent search volume. SEMRush will give you this data too.
4. ADD YOUR KEYWORDS TO ALL THE RIGHT PLACES
It’s important to add your keywords to all the right places on each webpage including:
- Title Tag
- Meta Description
- Page Headers
- First 100 Words
- Image File Name
- Alt tag
- URL
For a comprehensive site-by-step guide on how to do this, download my guide free: Add Your Keywords to Your Website in Less Than 15 Minutes.
5. START A BLOG AND CREATE A CONSISTENT PLAN
Blogging is a great way to get ranking for your chosen keywords, engage with your audience and build brand authority. Each blog post that you create is a new opportunity to rank in the search results for new keywords and it certainly pleases Google when you’re constantly adding new content.
Plan and create consistent content to post on your blog and group them into topic clusters – multiple pieces of content on the same topic and sub-topics.
You can always send out an email to your current audience too to let them know about your most recent blog post.
Where possible, try post consistently - once a week and create content your audience is searching for, not what you ‘think’ they’re looking for. This will help increase your website traffic too. Use SEMRush’s Magic Keyword Tool to generate some ideas or run a Google Search and look at the recommendations that show in Google search bar.
6. CREATE A PLAN TO BUILD LINKS
To help boost your website to position one in Google above your competitors, you'll need to get backlinks which are links from other websites pointing to yours. The more reputable the website the bigger the boost.
Make a list of ways you could get backlinks to your site. Here are a few easy suggestions:
Family and friends: ask those close to you with a website or blog to link to your website via a supplier list.
Affiliated businesses: consider complementary businesses you could link to e.g., if you’re an SEO specialist, you could ask an affiliated copywriter or web developer to link to you as a partner.
Suppliers: if you sell other people’s products, or services, you could ask them to link to you as a reseller or stockist.
Directories: look for reputable industry related directories in the regions you operate in.
Guest Blogging: approach other blogs for guest blogging opportunities that will link back to your site.
7. PULSE CHECK YOUR RESULTS ON THE REGULAR
You want to keep track of your SEO progress by monitoring your results.
Use free tool Google Analytics to see who is visiting your site and how they're finding you.
Free tool Google Search Console will help you monitor your website's ranking and see who is linking to your site.
Use SEMRush to help track you and your competitors keyword positions, run audits on your website and look for new ways to get backlinks.
As you can see, it’s not as difficult as you think.
The GOOD news: if you’re willing to put in a little elbow grease by following these steps, you’ll finally start to attract a ready-to-buy audience to your website, absolutely free.
This is a banging time to get it done as well with many small-to-medium businesses yet to implement their SEO. With marketing about to get a whole lot harder thanks to changes in privacy laws and online tracking of users, it's the best time to get ahead of the competition and get results on autopilot.
Are you ready to take your SEO to the next level and finally have one area of marketing to focus your efforts?
