One of the biggest reasons for creating a website and most commonly asked questions to any SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) is “How do I get my website to rank in google?” Other questions we often here are “When I search for XXXXX how come I don’t see my website?”. Well there is no short answer to those questions, and without accepting that SEO is an ongoing process that requires significant attention, advertising is your only option using Google Adwords.
If you are a Charity or operate a Not-For-Profit you should read my article on how to obtain thousands of dollars of free adwords from Google directly through their grants program.
A critical step is often missed by most marketers which would quickly provide them with all of the information needed to confirm whether or not their content is ranking well in Google and just how many times it is appearing in google search queries.
There are 3 critical implementations that will quickly give you google search data on how well your website is performing.
- Ensure that your website has a XML sitemap, typically your developer should have built your website, or your CMS should output one here: www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml. A sitemap is essentially a dynamic file that lists all of your websites content and allows search engines like google to quickly scan and index them.
- Install Google Analytics on your website. It’s free, and in 2018 if you don’t have it you are missing out on a ton of valuable data. Google Analytics tells you how many visitors your website receives by day and where they came from.
- And most importantly (in my opinion) and often left out of the list is Google Webmaster Tools, or now as referred to as “Google Search Console”. Google Search Console allows you to register your website with Google, ensure that your sitemap has no issues and is being scanned, and alerts you when there are issues with your site being scanned (or crawled) by Google. But the most important data (I feel) available on this completely free platform is that it shows you what keywords your site is showing up for, how many impressions and how many clicks converted from those searches. It is one of my most valuable tools in the toolbox while working on a SEO Strategy.
If you are interested in seeing how your competitors built their websites to rank for specific keywords, check out my free SEO analysis tool.