Improve your website’s search engine rankings

Here’s our top tips to improve your website search engine rankings. Although it may seem obvious, make sure your start with the basics like an excellent business positioning statement so that visitors can easily identify the services, or products on offer. Make sure your business’s name, address and phone number consistently on both your website and wherever your business is mentioned on the web.

1. Sign-up for Google Places

The first businesses that are generally shown are listed on Google Places, so it’s definitely worth setting this up. There’s an enormous advantage to appearing either in the local box on the right of the page, or the local pack results that appear mixed in with the standard results. So register for Google My Business. Once you’ve registered, a Google Plus page will automatically be created for your company. You’ll also be asked to verify your address. This is done by sending you a postcode that you have to return to Google. You should do this without delay. When you receive your code, you should populate as much information as possible.

2. Add links from online directories

The phone directory may be dead, but online directories still carry a lot of clout. The trick is finding the right ones. There are two types of directories, and you should be looking for: The kind that’s so big you can’t ignore it (Yelp, for example) and the kind that is used by your customers and people like your customers. There’ll be a significant degree of overlap here, but you shouldn’t neglect the latter group. Directories list: http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/definitive-local-search-citations/#uk. Remember, this isn’t about making as many submissions as possible; it’s about making sure your business is listed on sites that are being used by potential customers. You could also set your business up on Bing Places. It’s not as popular as Google, but Bing still attracts a significant number of searches. Make sure you’re on Yelp. You probably covered this in an earlier step, but if not make sure you do it now. Yelp is used by Apple Maps, so if you want to let iPhone users know where you are, then you need to be on there.

3. Ask for customer reviews

Encourage people to leave you reviews. Many listings sites, including Google My Business, allow customers to leave reviews. Clearly it’s in your interests to get as many good ones as possible. You can find out more about how to get more reviews in this post.

4. Post regular fresh content

Writing regular news content about the services you are offering and including backlinks from various source will also improve your website’s search engine placement.

5. Point social media signals

Social media is an excellent way to boost your websites ranking. Meaning it can be found more frequently. This is because Google has recently placed more importance on what are commonly referred to as “social signals”.

If you haven’t already, you should also think about getting your Twitter feed embedded into the homepage of your website. Google like websites that are constantly changing text is just the type of thing they consider when allocating rankings.

Identify your keywords and use them to link to your website, so that your rankings improve over time, e.g. #Your CompanyName #YourCompanyLocation #YourServicesOffered, LinkToYourWebsite.

A good social media stream has also been shown to improve the conversion rate of existing visitors to your website, as they will take your busy social content into account when judging your competence and professionalism.

Many people now use social media platforms to search for a business, rather than through a search engine like Google, so get posting!

6. PPC

If you’re launching, or have just launched, a new site makes sure you’ve followed some of the above steps to be found in search engines. Or, if you’re keen to start attracting customers straight away, you should consider using a pay-per-click (PPC) service such as Google AdWords.