How Does SEO Work With Google?
Google helps connect people with the information, products, and services they’re looking for every day. Many times Google is the one and only resource someone uses to find products or services online. As a business owner, you should be leveraging this power to help new customers find you, and we’ll show you how.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a method of improving the rankings of a particular business or website on a search results page.
One of the first steps to boosting search engine results page (SERP) rankings is to identify and target keywords or key phrases that describe what you offer or ask a question.
For example, ‘water conservation ways’ ‘or How to prevent and fix leaky toilets’ would be key phrases that sites could try to rank for.
These phrases may be quite general, so it’s better to be more specific with keywords and key phrases but if someone has managed to rank highly for search terms like these, they may take up a lot of the traffic by showing as the top search results.
Search engine optimization works with Google by helping to make websites relevant, authoritative, and engaging so that people want to click on them when they search for specific keywords.
SEO and Google
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing sites to try and make them appear in a high position in the organic search results. In order to do so, SEO tries to shape a website according to Google’s algorithm. That being said, this algorithm is aimed at giving online users the best answer to their questions and the best experience possible. Although Google’s algorithm remains secret, over a decade of experience in SEO has resulted in a pretty good idea about the important factors.
We monitor all communications by Google about changes in the algorithm, and we test what actually works in the search engines. At Yoast, we advocate holistic SEO. Your SEO strategy should never feel like a trick. The search engine wants to show the user the result that fits his or her search query best. That’s how Google works, in a nutshell. If you want to appear high in the results for that specific search term, make sure to write awesome and SEO-friendly content and offer users a good online experience.
What is Google SEO
involves more than a one-sentence definition. You also need an overview of the ins and outs of Google optimization, which stretches from ranking factors to best practices, to improve your search engine optimization.
What’s more authentic than an explanation from Google itself about its standards for search engine optimization? Google’s SEO guidelines for webmasters recommend plenty of don’ts, but their newer SEO Starter Guide gives a broader understanding of how to do Google SEO.
How can an SEO company help with Google SEO?
SEO companies can answer your tough questions like “What is Google SEO?” and “How do I rank higher in Google search results?” Their team members devote their careers to mastering Google’s ranking factors and honing sites for higher rankings.
An SEO agency like WebFX knows what Google wants and how to transform your pages. Our skilled team of 500+ brings their unique expertise to your campaign and focuses on results.
Another advantage of our SEO services is our robust digital marketing tools. We have the number one ROI tracking platform in the industry — MarketingCloudFX — which allows us to maintain a data-driven approach.
How Does SEO Work With Google?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of optimizing web pages to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), with the goal of increasing organic (non-paid) traffic to a website. Since Google is the most popular search engine, SEO primarily focuses on optimizing for Google’s algorithm. Here’s how SEO works with Google:
Keyword research:
SEO begins with identifying the keywords or phrases that people use to search for information related to your website or business. Keyword research involves identifying the search terms with high search volume and low competition that are relevant to your business.
On-page optimization:
Once the keywords are identified, the website’s content, structure, and metadata are optimized to target those keywords. This includes optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, headings, and content to include the target keywords in a natural and useful way.
Off-page optimization:
Off-page optimization includes building backlinks, social media sharing, and other methods of promoting your website outside of your website’s pages. This is done to signal to Google that your website is authoritative and trustworthy.
Technical optimization:
Technical optimization involves ensuring that the website is technically sound and easy for search engines to crawl and index. This includes optimizing website speed, and mobile responsiveness, and fixing any technical errors that may negatively impact search engine ranking.
Content creation:
Creating high-quality and engaging content is an essential aspect of SEO. This includes creating blog posts, videos, infographics, and other types of content that target relevant keywords and provide value to your audience.
How can I improve my website’s SEO performance?
Here are some of the most common methods to improve your website’s ranking within Google searches:
1. Ensure all external links work properly
Broken links are a problem for websites as they can hurt your search engine ranking. To mitigate this problem, make sure all of your external links are working properly and aren’t leading to 404 error pages (aka broken links) External links are more powerful to build your SEO than internal links, so make sure you’re getting the most out of them.
2. Evaluate and improve the content on your website
Adding new and original content is important to stay relevant and to keep your audience engaged. It can be easy to forget to update existing content while focusing on new content, so you should regularly review and optimize older content. As you check your own content, ask yourself if this is relevant, useful, and targets specific keywords and key phrases.
Utilizing HubSpot’s tools, such as the SEO scanner, Topic Clusters, and Page Optimizations and Recommendations will help keep your website optimized and ranking in SERP.
3. Increase your website’s link popularity
Link popularity is basically a measure of how many other websites are linking back to yours. The more quality links that you have pointing to your site, the higher your site will rank in search engine results pages.
When Google sees that other websites (perhaps those with authority and are considered trustworthy) are linking to your website, it boosts your ranking by association because now your website is associated with these quality websites.
4. Organize your website’s layout
When building your website, it’s important to remember delivering a good user experience is key.
Simply having the information online isn’t enough, the information needs to be easily accessible for users to navigate through intuitively. The website’s layout should be structured logically. If users have a difficult experience finding your website, that may place doubts in their minds about choosing your business.
The importance of market segmentation in digital marketing
5. Optimize your page’s metadata
Metadata is the webpage information that search engines use when indexing the page to provide search engine users information about it. Think of it as ‘preview’ information, or the little bit of text and information underneath the link on the SERP (Search Engine Results Pages).
Metadata includes titles, descriptions, tags (of keywords), and more. Your metadata might be the very first impression someone has of your website if they are seeing it for the first time on a SERP, so having accurate and organized information is critical.