If you are just starting out with a website, one of the first things you need to know is that it will not just appear on Google’s search engine results pages as soon as it goes live. It takes some time and effort to get your website ranked on Google. Fortunately, everything you need to do to increase your odds of ranking on Google is completely free and simple to implement.
1. Use The Correct Keywords For Your Niche
As you have likely heard, more than once, content is king. Your website must have good content in order for Google to index it. Within that content, you must incorporate the right keywords that are relevant to your niche. Keywords are words or phrases that people use when searching Google for something in your niche. Google will crawl your website and pick up the most commonly used words. It will then use them as content clues in order to rank your website.
It should not be difficult to incorporate keywords throughout your site because they are typically words that naturally flow into your content. However, you must be mindful with your keyword usage. Be sure to include items such as your location, contact information, and information that is relevant to your particular business niche and customers within your content. Be sure to include these words and phrases in both your titles and your text. However, do not overuse keywords, this practice is known as keyword stuffing, is highly suspect, and Google will penalize your site for this.
2. Use Meta Tags
Although the content that shows up in Google appears to come directly from your website content, Meta tags play a very important role in getting your site ranked. Meta data and Meta descriptions are included on the backend of your site that Google uses to help provide additional information to searchers in the search engine results. Meta tags are essentially short introductions that you include for each page of the site.
3. Submit The Website To Google
Google crawls the Internet and collects information from millions of websites each day. If your site has good content with keywords and meta tags, it is likely that it will eventually be crawled by Google. However, if you would like to speed up the process, you need to submit the site directly to Google. You can also resubmit the site anytime you make changes to ensure that the most recent information is indexed.
4. Use Social Media To Your Advantage
In addition to the above, you should also use your social media accounts if you really want to get your site indexed. Add your website to all of your social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn and so on. You should share updates on these platforms on a regular basis and include a link back to your site. Google likes to visit sites with links, so this will help increase your odds of ranking on Google.
Ranking on Google is not a difficult task, but it will take some time. Also, avoid any offers to get your site indexed through a paid service. These are often a scam and they utilize methods that are against Google’s terms of service. Just take your time and provide helpful, relevant information and you will soon see your efforts pay off.