How to Improve Your Google Search Ranking in 5 Simple Steps

How to Improve Your Google Search Ranking in 5 Simple Steps

by | Dec 4, 2020 | Business & Marketing Strategy, Business Intelligence & Analytics, Insights, Marketing Planning & Execution

How to Improve Your Google Search Ranking in 5 Simple Steps

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Search engine optimization is an essential aspect of helping your business grow. On average, the first five results on Google receive 67 percent of clicks, so it’s tough to get website traffic when you’re sitting way back on page five. You want your site to be one of the first results a potential customer sees when they perform a search looking for a solution to their problem. Here are five ways to improve your Google search ranking and boost your business growth.

How to Improve Your Google Search Ranking

1. Utilize Tools to Track Your Site Activity

Google has helpful tools that will provide you with insight into how your site is performing. Google Search Console and Google Analytics (don’t miss the brand new GA4) collect your website activity to give you data you can use to improve your SEO. You want to know how many visitors you are bringing in, who they are, and how they engage with your site to determine how to attract more of those visitors and get them to stick around and convert.

There are other tools available that will help you track your site’s progress against your competitors. Find the ones that will work best for you and keep an eye on your site’s performance. We recommend Uber Suggest and SEMRush (both have free tools). If you notice that your site is not performing as well as you’d like, you can use these tools to start troubleshooting possible SEO problems.

2. Check Your Site’s Structure

There are certain links you should look for in your website’s structure. Double-check that all pages on your website are in HTTPS. Search engines prefer HTTPS pages over HTTP for security reasons, and if you are still using the latter, it could cause you to fall out of Google’s good graces.

You’ll also need to find and fix any crawl errors — you can use some of the tools we mentioned above to help identify these. Crawl errors occur when a search engine’s bot cannot access a page. Ensure that all of the links on your site lead to actual pages and make sure to have a customized 404 page that will still send visitors where you want them to go if they stumble onto a bad link.

Once you have ensured that all of the pages on your site are active and available, you can create a sitemap. A sitemap is essentially a list of the pages on your site. You can submit it to Google to improve your search engine ranking.

3. Create Good Content

While there are ways to improve your SEO without changing your content, a surefire method is creating high quality content. Create content for actual humans with a search engine in mind, not the other way around. 

You should know what your audience is looking for so you can answer the questions they are asking. Are they looking for a certain product or service? Do they need assistance with an issue? Whatever it is they are looking to find, you want to provide it for them — just like we wrote this article for you. 

Content naturally will become out of date as time passes. Stay on top of your content to increase your site’s traffic. Search engines prefer accurate and timely information, and they could pass up your site in favor of one with more current content.

Along with updating information, you should also remove anything that does not add value. Perform a content audit and get rid of any irrelevant content that you find. You want your audience to enjoy visiting and interacting with your site, and part of that is ensuring that your content is worthwhile. Google is incredibly smart and learns what your site is about so it can recommend it to others. If you have irrelevant content that could prevent Google from figuring out what topic your company is an expert in, they won’t recommend you.

4. Utilize Keywords & Incorporate Them Into Your Page Titles and Descriptions

Keywords are an essential part of SEO. When searching for specific terms, engines will match sites with those same keywords. With the right keywords, you can make sure that users find your site as a straightforward and clear solution to the problem  they are searching to solve.

Identify your key terms. These are your most searched keywords, and their use can help your site rank highly. Additionally, you want to find your long-tail keywords. They deliver a higher conversion rate, but they can be more challenging to work into your site’s content as they are not searched as often.

An effective way to look at where you can improve your keywords is by creating a keyword map. It can help you find where you need to add, optimize, or change content to fit more keywords.

5. Check Your Site’s Performance

There are a few different aspects of performance you should check to make sure your website is functioning properly and meeting Google’s standards. 

  • Ensure that Google Search Console has indexed your site (you should already have this tool from back in step 1). If not, it will not show up as a result at all, meaning no amount of SEO improvement will help because Google doesn’t recognize you. You can also check for site duplicates. If more than one version of your site is indexed, your data can become split across them.
  • Check your site’s speed. Pages that do not load within a few seconds are usually abandoned, and Google will track when users leave your site quickly. Keep visitors on your site by ensuring it has a fast loading speed.
  • Make sure that your site is mobile-friendly. Nowadays, Google factors in how your site looks and feels on mobile when considering site ranking. Even if they did not, you want visitors to be able to access your site on different devices.
  • Review your Google Analytics data often. Monitoring your goal completions, traffic, and more popular pages will help you understand what kind of content is performing well and what you should adjust, remove, or add.

Final Thoughts

Search engine optimization is an important part of driving traffic to your business’s website. The higher you rank, the more visitors will be able to find you With these five tips, you can easily improve your Google search ranking, enhance your SEO, and bring in more customers. 

Data is one of the key components to optimizing your website for Google, and there are an infinite number of dashboards, programs, and tools to help you sift through and interpret data. With the right strategies and tools, you can transform into actionable insights that serve as your marketing roadmap. Download our Business Intelligence eBook to learn more about this process and how it can help you grow your business.

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About Dexter Burgess

Marketing Manager Dexter Burgess takes the lead on implementing new tactics and promoting change through data-driven strategies. Dex works hard at client relations through consistent communication and positive feedback, never settling until the customer is understood and happy.

About &Marketing

&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.

2 Big Reasons Not to Pay an Agency Based on Percentage Spend

2 Big Reasons Not to Pay an Agency Based on Percentage Spend

by | Oct 5, 2020 | Business & Marketing Strategy, Insights

2 Big Reasons Not to Pay an Agency Based on Percentage Spend

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Agencies use all kinds of methods to determine how much to charge your business for managing your paid advertising. One of these methods is to take a certain percentage of what you’re spending on those ads, like a commission. There are lots of reasons why this approach doesn’t pan out well for growing businesses like yours, but let’s break two of the biggest reasons down together.

Why You Should Stop Paying Your Ad Agency Based on Percentage Spend

Reason #1: The Car Salesmen 

Picture this: you walk into a car dealership. You know exactly what you want and how much you’re willing to spend on that perfect little mini-van you’ve been dreaming about for years. Okay, maybe not a dream minivan. But you’re ready to buy and you’re excited!

Wait! You’ve got that one nerve-wracking hurdle to get past before you put those keys in that ignition and sign on the dotted line.

The car salesmen.

But why? Why is he the obstacle and not the trusted guide?

We know why. There is an inherent conflict of interest. He wants to make money, and the more money YOU SPEND, the more HE MAKES. Put the kindest, most honest salesperson in that position, and they are still going to benefit from talking you into spending more money on that car.

The same applies when you are paying your ad agency based on the percentage of spend. It confuses the motivations and the intentions. Is the agency suggesting you increase spend because it’s the best move for you, or because it’s the best move for them?

Reason #2: Everything is Not Created Equal

Consider the following:

Search Keyword Daily budget Potential cost per click Number of keywords or variances
rehab $300 $50 <20
blouses $300 $1.60 >300

At the time this blog was written, a company showing an ad for the search “rehab” can easily pay up to $50 for each click. They will more than likely need a pretty hefty budget to gain valuable conversions. However, their account structure may be incredibly simple and easy to manage, as they only offer one service. There isn’t a lot of variety to what they’re offering. In this case, a high budget does not necessarily mean a cumbersome account to manage.

On the other hand, a company selling blouses online with the exact same daily budget may require 4 times the work. There are endless combinations of sizes, colors, and styles, which may make the account more complex, therefore requiring more frequent account management.

So why would an agency charge them the same fees for managing their accounts?

Simple. They shouldn’t.

What Should You Be Paying Your Ad Agency? 

If your ad agency is asking you to pay by the percentage of ad spend, maybe it’s time to put some other options on the table.

As you move forward, keep the following things in mind.

You should be fairly paying your agency for their expertise in the area, the work they’ll be putting into improving account performance, and the returns they get for your company. Once you’ve considered these critical factors, navigating a fair agreement is just around the corner!

If you’re interested in knowing more about &Marketing’s approach to paid advertising as an outsourced marketing department, fill out the form below.

&Marketing leverages the power of Business Intelligence to gain insights on paid search performance and help our clients make informed decisions. To learn more about our BI and analytics process, download our eBook

About the Author

Marketing Director Sydney Thomas helps clients create, implement, and optimize campaigns in their Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising accounts. While ensuring that clients are getting the most out of their pay-per-click accounts, she also supports creating websites to improve SEO and supports paid social network advertising on Facebook and LinkedIn.

About &Marketing

&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.

3 Ways Business Leaders Can Improve Team Performance in a Challenging Environment with Harriet Stein

3 Ways Business Leaders Can Improve Team Performance in a Challenging Environment with Harriet Stein

by | Sep 28, 2020 | COVID Marketing, Insights

3 Ways Business Leaders Can Improve Team Performance in a Challenging Environment with Harriet Stein

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Business Leaders are finally realizing the importance of addressing the mental wellbeing needs of their employee base, since it is affecting their bottom line. It is unfortunate that it took a global pandemic for this issue to come to the forefront since the World Health Organization has stated that workplace stress was a global concern several years ago.

Leading in today’s environment can feel like a constant uphill battle where external circumstances are weighing on your team members. The good news is, your business (and your individual team members) can still experience growth no matter what chaos is happening around you. Burnout is an official medical diagnosis, according to the World Health Organization.

Based on my decades of experience, I have found 3 ways to improve team performance in a challenging environment.

3 Ways to Improve Team Performance in a Challenging Environment

Before you even begin, I invite you to shift your focus from the past to the present. No need to be looking in your rearview mirror at a past that is long gone. And worrying about the future has never proved valuable. 

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

Socrates

What can you do right now to support each individual and improve team performance?

  1. Pause and notice your thoughts and your own mental well-being. It is time to put the oxygen mask on yourself first and then look around you and see with fresh eyes who else you can help support.  A leader’s day-to-day attitude and behavior has a tremendous impact on the entire organization. Your health, and the health of everyone around you, will improve greatly.
  2. Support natural breaks that break up routines throughout the workday.  Invite your teams to take breaks.  One of the simplest things we can do even when working from home is taking at least 60 seconds (!) of every hour for what I call “non-doing”. Just rest and notice how it feels in your body without wanting it to be any different than how you find it.  Encourage it. 
  3. Provide your team with flexibility and resources introducing them to the practice of Mindfulness. 

 

“Mindfulness is the awareness that arises through paying attention on purpose in the present moment, nonjudgmentally…. in the service of self-understanding and wisdom.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn

The mind and the body work together. Your body is listening to you! It can hear you say, “How am I ever going to get all this done? I don’t even look forward to the weekend anymore.”

Why Your Team Needs Mindfulness Now

NOW, not later, is when you want to introduce a Mindfulness practice into you and your colleagues lives who are working so awfully hard for you, your company, and their families and friends.

Are you thinking, “I don’t have time for this… or we don’t have time for a program right now!”?

When people are thinking about the costs of health and wellness, they rarely consider the costs to the organization of sick time and lost productivity due to stress. All of us have been on Zoom meetings with others who are distracted, unproductive, or not fully “present.”

A Brief Mindfulness Practice

Join me in dipping your toe just briefly into the water of Mindfulness with this short practice. Find a quiet space where you can focus and follow my directions below.

I invite you to take a moment right now…and fully notice how it feels to be in your body…

noticing where your body is making contact with what you are sitting on…

feeling your weight on the back of your legs…and just resting in the moment…

with no place to go and nothing to do…and when your mind wanders as it surely will…

just noticing without judgment…once again how it feels to be sitting.

About the Author

Harriet Stein is the President of Big Toe In The Water (www.BigToeIntheWater.com), and has over 30 years of corporate and professional experience in healthcare. She is an expert on the topic of Mindfulness in the workplace as a presenter, coach, and inspiring teacher.

Harriet delivers Mindfulness programs to companies of all sizes – from small professional practices to global conglomeratets. If you are interested in having a mindfulness program for your company, please contact Harriet at Harriet@BigToeInTheWater.com or call her at 215-326-9459.

&Marketing and Sharpspring Present What is Marketing Automation? On May 23rd

&Marketing and Sharpspring Present What is Marketing Automation? On May 23rd

by | Apr 30, 2020 | Business & Marketing Strategy, Insights

&Marketing and Sharpspring Present What is Marketing Automation? On May 23rd

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&Marketing, along with SharpSpring, a leading provider of marketing automation, will host a live webinar demo of the SharpSpring automated marketing platform. The software demo livestream  “What is Marketing Automation?” is scheduled for 2:00 PM on May 23rd.

SharpSpring and &Marketing will be discussing key marketing automation tips and tricks for small-to-medium sized businesses looking to streamline their marketing approach. SharpSpring experts will be discussing how to utilize the power of email, website, social and other tools available in the platform to deliver your message quickly and effectively.

In this webinar, you will learn:

  • An overview of marketing automation trends and toolsets utilized within SharpSpring

  • How SharpSpring’s marketing automation software helps identify highly engaged leads for your sales team

  • How to interpret and leverage long-term reporting SharpSpring provides your business along with ongoing marketing insights

Register for our webinar on May 23rd to learn more!

About the Author

As the founder and Managing Director of &Marketing, Rajat “Raj” Kapur strives to provide growing businesses of all sizes unparalleled marketing strategy and execution services. Raj brings nearly two decades of professional experience in marketing, sales, and strategy development experience spanning B2B and B2C Fortune 50, mid-sized, and startups.

About &Marketing

In today’s fast paced world, many growing businesses are struggling to modernize their marketing approaches because either they don’t have the expertise or the bandwidth to do it themselves.

&Marketing provides seasoned marketing strategy professionals and a nimble execution team to help our clients achieve their goals. Our unique partnership model allows us to augment our client’s existing teams or outsource the entire marketing function in an affordable, flexible, and transparent way.

Low-Cost Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses: Part 2 (Digital Marketing)

Low-Cost Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses: Part 2 (Digital Marketing)

by | Apr 13, 2020 | Business & Marketing Strategy, Insights

Low-Cost Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses: Part 2 (Digital Marketing)

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In Part 1 of this series, we explored content marketing, where we outlined ways to create and distribute content to your audience in an efficient and inexpensive way. Now, in Part 2, we’ll focus on three digital marketing tactics you can accomplish with a small budget that will yield big returns: SEO, paid search, and paid social media advertising.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) enables pages on your website to rank higher for certain keywords or online queries related to your product or service. In other words, when a prospective customer types one of your targeted keywords, phrases, or queries into Google, your website will appear within the first few pages of results. This ensures your target audience is always able to find you through an organic search. The higher you rank, the more traffic you’re likely to generate to your website.

In Part 1, we discussed the importance of keyword research in developing your content strategy. The same goes for SEO optimization. Brainstorm keywords that your audience is likely to use when searching online for a product or service like yours. Then use a tool like SEM Rush, Keywords Everywhere, or UberSuggest (they all have free versions) to validate those keywords and find related searches. These tools will allow you to determine the monthly search volume for those keywords and how difficult it will be to rank for them.

Next, implement these three approaches to optimize your site for SEO:

  • On-page SEO: This is the information on a webpage that readers can see, including headers, sentences, images and graphics that create the look and feel of a site. Make sure this content includes the keywords you identified wherever relevant. Keep in mind, it is important to balance on-page SEO with the user experience, so be careful to not compromise the readability of the content by overloading it with keywords (this is called keyword stuffing).

  • Off-page SEO: This involves efforts taken to improve SEO outside of your website. Any time another company/website with high authority links back to your page (known as backlinking), this will increase your own domain’s authority. It demonstrates popularity and legitimacy to search engines, which in turn identifies your website as a subject matter expert on that particular topic. Essentially, these sites are “vouching” for you.

While on-page SEO is completely in your control, off-page SEO is not. You need to find ways to convince other brands to promote your content. There are a few ways to go about this:

  • Create quality content that people will want to cite in their own blog articles 

  • Be active on social media and share your content (some research shows that having a strong social presence, as well as high engagement on your posts can boost your rankings) 

  • Pitch an idea for a guest blog with a reputable online publication 

  • Engage influencers (it’s possible to do this without draining your budget!)

Keep in mind that search engines are very sophisticated and use complex algorithms to determine legitimate backlinks versus poor quality backlinks. Legitimate backlinks will improve your rankings, but poor quality backlinks (i.e. from websites with little authority) may harm your rankings.

  • Technical SEO: Updating and enhancing the behind-the-scenes data on your website can lead to significant improvements in organic search rankings. You can do this by: 

    • Eliminating duplicate content 

    • Using strong keywords

    • Updating meta tags with keywords to better reflect on-page content

    • Increasing the speed of your site

    • Using structured data with consistent formatting

    • Ensuring your site is mobile-friendly

    • Repairing or removing broken links

Ultimately, SEO optimization is neither a one-and-done activity nor a quick fix. In addition to the time it takes to manually update for SEO best practices, it also requires ongoing monitoring. Also keep in mind that improvements take time to register with search engines. We typically instruct clients that it takes 8-12 weeks for SEO changes to come to fruition. 

Paid Search Advertising

Sometimes, no matter what you do, your company will never rank first on Google. This is largely due to high competition for popular keywords, or major players like YouTube, Facebook, or LinkedIn occupying the top spots. However, putting some money behind your efforts can allow your company to rise to the top of search results. This is called paid search or search advertising.

With search advertising on Google, you develop ads with keywords that link back to a landing page/website, select a customized audience, and set a budget. You only pay for the clicks you actually receive on your ads. This channel gives you the ability to direct people exactly where you want them to land on your website (typically a landing page created specifically for paid search) that encourages them to take action and potentially convert into a customer. Since you set your budget, you can spend as little or as much as you decide. As you monitor your ads and activity through your personal dashboard, you can make adjustments in real-time to maximize results (we talk more on that here: Three Ways to Monitor & Maintain Your Paid Search Account for Maximum Results).

Paid Social Media Advertising

While you can make strides through your organic social media feed, the proof is in the pudding when it comes to the pay-to-play game. It’s important to maintain your presence and post consistently (we talked about this in Part 1), but paid social advertising – especially if you have a limited following – can help increase the visibility of your content more quickly (and in a more targeted way). 

With paid social, you can target your ideal audience demographic using hundreds of data points collected from billions of users, build a customer journey through highly targeted content and offers, and direct people to your product and service to close the deal. This will also drive more qualified leads to your social channels and eventually build your following, which will help your organic feed have a greater impact.

Social media advertising works similarly to paid search advertising in that you set a budget and determine how much you are willing to spend. With anything, you get what you pay for, so take time to plan a strategy that combines organic posts and paid ads. Be sure to research which platform your audience uses the most. 

If you’d like an even more comprehensive look at how to develop your social media strategy, check out our social media playbook for growing businesses.

Final Thoughts

While most digital marketing tactics can be accomplished on a relatively small budget, many of them rely on a consistent, value-added content strategy to be most effective. &Marketing encourages all clients to develop original content to become a thought leader in their industries, drive brand awareness, and promote sales growth. The largest ROI comes from a well-defined strategy that combines paid digital marketing with strong content marketing.

If you are a small or growing business looking to start a marketing program or take your existing program to the next level, we have a suite of services tailored specifically for you! We know that one size does not fit all, so as your outsourced marketing partner, we provide a menu of scalable marketing services to help meet your unique needs and budget.

About the Author

Marketing Director Amanda Cook helps clients develop sophisticated marketing campaigns that drive brand leadership, increase sales and elevate the customer experience. With over 15 years of experience, Amanda has delivered successful campaigns with bootstrapped budgets to leading marketing organizations at $1B companies. Whether local or global, she enjoys the challenge of uncovering a client’s business objectives and helping them build a strategy to succeed.

About &Marketing

In today’s fast paced world, many growing businesses are struggling to modernize their marketing approaches because either they don’t have the expertise or the bandwidth to do it themselves.

&Marketing provides seasoned marketing strategy professionals and a nimble execution team to help our clients achieve their goals. Our unique partnership model allows us to augment our client’s existing teams or outsource the entire marketing function in an affordable, flexible, and transparent way.