Improving your Google search performance

Are you looking to improve your company's performance in Google search, but unsure if you should pay a specialist? We understand. It can be daunting to fork out for a service you know nothing about, where results aren't instant or even guaranteed!

We get asked a lot about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and how to improve clients' search performance on Google, and while it's a profession in itself, there are some things you can do yourself that will definitely boost your search ratings without having to pay a specialist.

First, let's set some expectations

Google has powerful algorithms at work that dictate the order and visibility of websites that they index. These algorithms are continually tuned, tweaked and refined, but they deliberately move slowly in order to avoid spam and gamification of their system. They also deliberately leave their guidance for ranking quite vague, in order to prevent people from hacking the algorithms.

All of this is to say that you can't expect results overnight. Your performance may improve or decline with the changes you make to your website, but they won't be instant. In that regard, SEO is a continual process and not something that you can just do once in a "fire and forget" fashion. Just like you won't lose weight by eating a single salad or gain muscle by working out a single time, the end result will be a product of continual work and progress over time.

Before we begin, there are a couple of definitions I want to make in order to simplify the ownership of SEO work for your business:

Technical SEO: This is technical work normally undertaken by a web developer. It involves modifying underlying code and registering technical data.

Organic SEO: This is work that can be done by the owner of the business that is outside of the scope of technical code writing or modification. Basically, this is the DIY element of SEO.

With that out of the way, let's begin.

Register your business on Google

Are you registered as a local business on Google? It's surprising how many local businesses we work with that aren't registered, and don't appear on Google Maps or search results.

Google is becoming more "location-aware" when it comes to search results. For instance if you search for "bakery" on Google, it'll likely show you bakeries near you before some of the more vague entries like definitions and so on, so it pays to be on their map!

Registering on Google is free and takes a few minutes to do, and the process is usually totally finished within a week, with most of that being waiting for their verification postcard to arrive at your door.

You can register your business on Google here

Get some reviews

Once you've registered as a business, you'll unlock a world of potential for ranking higher in their search results. One of the most important important factors are reviews.

Google themselves mention that businesses with 5 or more 5-star reviews see a significant uplift in performance for search, so start asking for reviews where you can!

They even provide you with a handy link that's easy to share around so you can gather reviews with very little effort. For instance, take a look at our 5-star reviews.

There are more platforms for reviews such as Trustpilot, and there's no harm in belonging to multiple platforms, but for the context of appearing your results performance in Google, we'd stick with their platform to begin with.

Refine your content

On-page content is still an incredibly important ranking factor for search results, so it's in your best interest to craft an engaging narrative on your site that keeps viewers interested.

It's important to include keywords that are important to your business on your website, but also make sure that they're incorporated in a way that makes sense and isn't obviously a spammy attempt to cram as many keywords onto the page as possible.

When you're writing the content, it may be appealing to mention your company name as many times as possible for the brand exposure, but bear in mind that your potential audience won't necessarily know about you or your name, so this will have little bearing on your exposure.

Focus instead on phrases that they might search for. Be specific about your offerings and go into detail about them. Google loves detail.

Keep updating your content

Google loves to see content that changes over time and is kept up to date. Sites that haven't had updates in years often fall behind competitors that make even modest changes over time.

Do you have a blog on your website? Great, keep posting. Don't have a blog? Consider getting one as it's a great way to keep your site content changing and up to date. It's also a great way to build an audience and spread your reach over time.

Technical updates

Everything mentioned above is in the organic SEO category and can easily be done with no technical knowledge, but there are also technical things that can be done which supplement the organic optimisations.

We can index your site with Google and make sure that they're aware of everything on your site - as well as optimise the code on the page to include some SEO-specific functions which enhance your performance on their search results.

These are necessary updates in our opinion, but also useless to do without the above groundwork being laid in place before we begin.

Get in touch with us if you have any questions or need assistance with any of the points mentioned in this article, and as always, take care!