We are often asked how to get a website listed on the organic search results (SERPS) of Google and so we have pulled together this step by step guide to take you through the process. We strongly recommend you use available SEO tools if you really want to get the most from your web marketing activity.
As you read through our guide to getting your website into Google’s index you will see that it is fairly straightforward to get your website listed but it can take time and effort to consistently achieve high rankings.
STEP 1: Quality Content
Even before you submit your website to Google you will need to make sure that your website not only meets their webmaster guidelines but also offers visitors to your site relevant, high quality content.
Why is great content so important?
Your site will be competing with a trillion (1,000,000,000,000) other web pages in Google's index. If you're not offering relevant, interesting content to your visitors you really should consider going back to the drawing board.
Remember though that whilst your content might be really interesting, if the wrong visitors are coming to your site it will have little impact on your business. It must therefore also target the searches actually used by your potential customers so that the search engines index it correctly and they find your site.
So before you start writing, consider what Keyword Phrase you want to target.
Use software such as Wordtracker's Keyword Research Tool to help identify niche keywords that will set you apart from your online competition.
You can also use Google's free tools:
- External Keyword Tool (Tip: Setting up an Adwords account and logging will give you more data)
- Google Insights
Keyword tools can help find the keyword phrases currently being used by searchers all over the world.
TIP! Targeting longtail keywords can quickly get your site found on Google and generating internet traffic far faster than going after (more) competitive keyword variations.
Optimising your site for search engines should ALWAYS start with keyword research and then the processes of on-page and off- page optimisation can take place.
Get more information about Keyword Research here
STEP 2 – On-Page Optimisation
Now your content is correctly targeting relevant keyword phrases you will need to ensure the rest of your website is aligned to help your site get indexed. Things to check your website for are:
•It is structured correctly with a clear internal hierarchy
•It makes relevant use of text links
•Text is being used rather than text embedded inside an image - search engines cannot read the contents of an actual image
•Your title tags are unique and descriptive for each and every page
•All pages offer unique content and are not duplicated copies of one another (if not possible to remove duplicated content then they can be regulated with the canonicalisation tag)
•ALT tags are being used to describe images correctly
•A sitemap is included on your website (this is not an XML sitemap) to link to every page online
•You include a robots.txt file to instruct Google's robots when they arrive at your site
Once you have sorted out the on- page elements of your optimisation then you need to increase the trust factor with your website by focusing on off-page factors.
All sound a bit technical or too time consuming? Get some help by outsourcing your SEO
STEP 3 – Off-Page Optimisation
A large factor in whether your website is listed and ranked by the search engines is how much they trust it compared to your competition. Off-page optimisation techniques, when correctly executed, will help you build the trust levels.
When considering off-page optimisaton the main things to ensure are:
•All links are correct with no broken links either to other pages on your site or external websites
•You have links from at least 7 to 15 established ranked websites of a similar nature or theme to yours
•You have a natural and balanced link profile with links from a variety of sources
Don’t forget that building links takes time, patience and care – don’t expect to do it all immediately. Get some good quality links at the start and then continue to build them over time.
Find out more about building links to your site.
STEP 4 – Keep it legal
One of the most important steps in the process is to double check that what you have applied meets best practice search engine optimization techniques. White hat SEO is the only way to ensure you get listed and rank well for the long term.
Google’s webmaster guidelines give you help to make sure you don’t inadvertently break the rules.
Now that all of these elements are in place you can submit your site before creating a sitemap.
STEP 5 – Create an XML Sitemap
Go to Google Webmaster Tools and set up an account . Before you go ahead and start using this tool you will need to register a Google Account if you have not already done so (it is a good idea as that way you can sign up to more of Google's Products on offer to help you and your business online).
Once your website has been verified which may take a little time you can use a third party tool to help you generate your sitemap:
This tool can generate your XML site map for you. It’s very simple easy to do.
Once your XML Sitemap is set up ready to go you can then move to the next stage.
STEP 6 – Use Webmaster Tools to check your site
Use Google's Webmaster Tools to review and check your website. The tool will identify and potential issues with your website so that you can address them.
Your XML sitemap can help Google's robots analyse your site in far greater depth. It is unlikely your website will be listed any faster for your targeted keywords but the easier you can make life easier for bots then the better (just make sure your site's internal page structure is clear and concise).
Webmaster Tools can also track links to your website together with monitoring 404's for broken pages on your website.
The load speed of web pages is becoming an increasingly important factor in web optimisation so it is also critical you work with your web developers to make sure your website content loads quickly - for more information we recommend you check out Google Page Speed.
So your site has been optimised using both on and off page techniques, you have a site map, you have used Google Webmaster tools to check your site so what next?
Well now you have to wait and leave it to Google to index your website pages.
Consider when they do, how will you know if your site is successful online once listed? That is where another free Google tool will help.
STEP 7 - Google Analytics
Every marketing campaign needs to have some way of measuring whether it has been successful and web marketing is no different. Google Analytics is a free tool that enables you to measure your sites success online by recording and providing detailed information on key indicators such as:
- The number of visitors to your site
- How visitors were brought to your site
- What keywords they entered into Google to find your site
- Their behaviour once on your site - how long they stayed, how many and which pages they looked at
- Whether they undertook a specific action that you have decided to monitor (by setting goals) such as completing a contact form or adding a product to a shopping basket.
With all of this information at your finger tips it means you can continually develop your website and online marketing strategy to increase your sales.
STEP 8 – Ask for Help
Still unsure how to go about getting your site listed and ranked with Google? Why not contact an experienced Web Marketing Company to help.
At All Things Web we do just that - helping businesses of all sizes make their websites a success day in day out.
Having completed each of the tasks above the obvious question everyone asks is:
When can they expect to see their website in Google’s results?
We get asked this question a lot and the answer is simple, it depends very much on whether you have followed the steps above correctly.
If you have identified and targeted popular keywords with less competition and then aligned your content and on page elements accordingly, built links to your site to help the search engines trust it and made sure everything meets best practice SEO techniques then it is possible your site will get listed and start to rank reasonably quickly.
On the other hand if you're targeting one or two word keyword phrases that have hundreds of thousands or even millions of websites competing, don’t utilize the relevant SEO techniques correctly then you've got your work cut out!
To find out more about how to get your site listed and ranked with Google, check out our SEO Resources Page and Blog or sign up for our newsletter all of which are full of useful tips and hints.
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