In the previous “SEO: how it works” article we went over some of the most important technical factors when it comes to getting ranked on Google. Now we will take a deeper dive into these factors to provide some more information on what you can do to rank best.
Website content
The most important thing to know is that you need to talk about the city you want to rank for in your content as well as use the keywords you want to rank for in your titles and content. This is how Google knows which words to show your site for. If you don’t use the terms that people will be searching for in your content you’re going to have trouble.
You should also check which of your competitors are ranking for the terms you want to show up for. See how much content they have on their website, make sure you have as much or more to improve your odds of outranking them.
Backlinks
Backlinks are an SEO term that can seem intimidating at first but it’s simply a website linking to your site. For local businesses the most important backlinks to get are usually local directory links. This just means making a profile on sites such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Home Advisor.
Getting listed in all these sites will create a profile for your business and, in that profile, you should place a link to your site. When Google sees these other sites are linking to your site, it gives Google more confidence that your business exists and is real. They are more likely to show your website in Google results if they believe it’s trustworthy. It is a great idea to try and get links from other websites such as local news sites or other local business sites, it will help to improve your authority in Google’s point of view.
Technical factors
These technical factors are a barrier for many business owners because they can be hard to implement on your own, especially if you are not technologically inclined. If you have the capability, consider hiring an expert to do this for you. Some factors may also be impossible to implement depending on how your website was built and which platform was used. Our team at Nomadic Advertising suggests almost all local businesses to use WordPress. There are a multitude of factors why we suggest WordPress one of them being the flexibility to make any needed changes on the website. If you need help with your website or don’t have a website, our team can help you out.
The most important technical factors that you will want to implement for your website based on our experience are:
- Title tags – These are H tags
- Local Schema markup
- Good link structure
Although there are many other technical factors you can consider here that are beyond the scope of this guide, these are the most important ones to start with.
