Why your website isn’t on the first page of Google.
Listen. I understand your frustration, trust me. Getting into spots 1-5 for the query you want to rank for is confusing, tiring, demoralizing, probably all the above. In short, this process can really suck. I’m sure by now you have looked at a few blogs and have talked to a few search engine optimization/content marketing agencies and have heard the same thing. “It can take a long time to rank for (insert the keyword you’ve been wanting to rank #1 for 3 years here)”
Unfortunately, I don’t have anything new to tell you. They are spot on. It’s probably going to take a long time to rank for the things you want to rank in spots #1-5 for. But it doesn’t have to be a 2–3-year uphill battle trying to rank for all of the keywords that are relevant to your niche and your business. This needs to be a more widespread effort to rank for keywords that are relevant to who you are, and what you do. So, let’s help you get on the coveted first page.
#1 TRYING TO FIGHT FOR HIGHLY COMPETITIVE KEYWORDS
Coming out of the gate listing the keywords you want to rank #1 for in the future is great. Read that again for me.
For any plan, it’s great to start by creating a list of short-term goals, and long-term goals. For any search engine optimization (SEO) initiative, you want to think of short-term as 3-6 months, and long-term as 6-12+ months. Depending on what industry you are in and how big your competitors are, it might be flat-out impossible to rank for highly sought after keywords without putting years and years of ongoing work into SEO. This is why you need a realistic plan.
A great search engine optimization (SEO) plan created by an agency or a freelancer is going to have “easy wins” at the top of the plan, and highly competitive keywords at the bottom. And before I pass up me throwing in the phrase “easy wins” and move on, let me explain it a little more:
Easy wins are queries that are found on Google Search Console under your ‘performance’ section. And before you go and waste 2 hours looking on search console and review this blog as a “1 star but would’ve made it 0 if I could” on Yelp, this is not a filter or feature on the platform.
Easy wins are going to be queries that have high impression/click numbers but are in ranking limbo. These queries are usually going to have an average rank between 25 and 50 (can be lower), and are just kind of, well, stuck. Some websites will have many of these, some won’t. Even though these queries are going to be relatively easier to rank for than the highly competitive queries, going after easy wins early on will give you some search engine exposure, give you some traffic, help shape new ideas and initiatives, and lift your spirits during this long process.
Trust me, I care about the long-term, but it’s good to get a few wins under your belt before taking on the challenge of trying to rank for those #1-5 placements when it can be a very long-term battle to get those spots.
#2 YOUR WEBSITE’S PAGES AREN’T OPTIMIZED
Something that should always come standard in any search engine optimization (SEO) plan is the optimization of the website itself. Although there are a few things that are usually billed separately like usability testing and fixes to your website, an audit your website and, at the very least, suggesting what problems to fix in order of importance should come at the beginning of the process. If the agency you are working with bills changes into the monthly agreement you have, even better. Some changes, like meta tag changes and optimizations, are usually standard. But this does depend on the agency or freelancer you are working on and the agreement you have with them.
So, what should be optimized?
MOBILE FRIENDLINESS
Simply put, your website should be designed to be mobile friendly. Web design agencies, branding agencies, and dev shops that create and launch websites are starting to design them in a “mobile-first” mindset. I’d say most websites that have been launched in the last 1-2 years should be mobile friendly. In the past, I would recommend testing your website on Google’s Mobile-Friendliness Test, but it is now retired. if you aren’t sure or want to test your website out to see if it is mobile friendly, go visit your website on a mobile device of your choice and see if everything is in the viewing window. You shouldn’t have to zoom in or scroll left to right to move around to different parts of the website. Another tell-tale sign that your website is not mobile friendly is viewing your mobile metrics and seeing if people are landing and bouncing off the jump. Good, mobile friendly websites are going to have a relatively neutral bounce rate and 1st page duration.
META TAGS
You should have keywords you would like to rank for in both your title and description tags. Having keywords in meta tags doesn’t directly make you rank higher, but it does help people understand and decide what website is relevant to their query when results do show up. Title and description meta and open graph (OG) tags aren’t the only tags you should have and optimize on your website, but for the sake of time, I’ll just talk about the 2 tags that are the most visible and important in searches.
WEBSITE PERFORMANCE
Google hasn’t really come out and directly say that website performance is a ranking factor, but what we can interpret from website performance, in general, is that it is. Website performance, in a nutshell, affects the user experience of every single visitor that comes to your website. If you have a poor performing website, visitors are going to close out of or bounce from your page. Check your website on Google’s Pagespeed Insights if you’d like to know where your problem areas are and what your overall performance grade is. The Pagespeed test is not a definitive guide, it is more of a pass/fail test. But it is still a good test to run if you are unsure of why your website is performing poorly.
#3 NOT CREATING HIGH QUALITY CONTENT ON A CONSISTENT BASIS
It is important before you jump into search engine optimization (SEO) initiative to really understand your audience and to know what they want from you. What you don’t want to do is upload a blog a week that is stuffed with keywords and does nothing to help your intended audience learn. If you are doing this, your returning user numbers and social media link clicks/shares are probably starting to drop off. The main reason for optimizing your website and writing blogs is to help people. Ranking higher is just a byproduct of optimizing your website and writing content that is engaging. In the end, Google needs to deliver the most relevant, authoritative result to a query the first time around. You need that to be your website.
So, how should you go about all of this? Well, there are several different ways to make sure your content is going to be relevant and well-written to have a chance at ranking higher.
If you are doing this yourself or thinking about doing it yourself, you need to have a plan in place. Look at Google Search Console and look at the queries you are getting impressions/clicks for. See anything that interests you that has a low ranking? Write and publish a piece of content on your website that can utilize that query to answer a question or teach your website visitors something they didn’t know before reading. Share why you are an expert in your niche and why they should listen to you on other pages of your website that users are migrating to after reading your content.
If you ever get stuck, ask your audience and past customers what they wish they would’ve learned from you before purchasing, what topics it would be fun to learn more about in your industry, what content they want to see from you. Don’t be afraid to search competitor websites and look at what they are doing, either. Do the topics interest you? Are they well-written and solve a problem the audience has? Can you do better? Take this into account.
If you don’t want to do this all yourself and you are thinking about hiring someone, go with someone who cares about all of this (and who writes well). You also need someone who is going to take care of on and off-page work, who will give you relevant reports based on trends and keyword research, and who will fight for you to rank higher on search engines. Let’s make something great together.
