Blog: RECIPE - What To Do When Your Webpage Doesn’t Rank
Let’s get this straight: technology is hard. Most of us have never touched a lick of coding and prefer to live in a world of ignorance where the internet is run by magic gnomes and fairies.
Unfortunately, the truth is a little more complicated--and unbelievable--than mystical forest creatures. As a result, we often don’t know who, or what, to blame for a failing webpage. It seems much simpler to blame the magic powers and their fancy algorithms for slighting us. But the reality is a few simple tools can help you understand the keys to cracking the seemingly paranormal code of high-ranking web pages.
To make sure you have the best strategy possible, follow this recipe for ways to ensure that your website is truly optimized for your ultimate success.
INGREDIENTS:
For your content:
- A few, or many, spoonfuls of patience
- A gallon of creativity
- A bushel of ideas
For your website:
- A bucket of research
- A super-ton of strategy
- A cup full of willingness to learn
For your analytics:
- A hefty reliance on Google Analytics
- A *seemingly* endless stream of keywords
- A teaspoon of courage in the face of failure
FOR YOUR CONTENT:
Your content must be original, fresh, and have the potential to draw in users. Without a refined and identified content marketing strategy, the website will fall flat, like a cake top, no pun intended…
The content should be geared towards the website or company’s audience and users. Each blog post, piece of content, or landing page should relate to the keywords that the company is targeting for users and should relate to value propositions the company has created. Creative angles that explore a variety of ideas relating to the propositions will help search engines to recognize the website’s credibility, and in turn, increase the page’s ranking.
Think about it: who wants to spend their time on a website that isn’t engaging or interesting? Missing the content strategy seems simple enough and easy to avoid, but is as crucial as mixing up baking powder and baking soda measurements. It may not make or break the website, but it will be the underlying force to either delighting your user or facing high bounce rates out of boredom. It will take time and patience to identify and create the quality and quantity of content search engines think users will enjoy, but it will pay off in the long run.
FOR YOUR WEBSITE:
We often look up the recipe for our cookies before we bake them. We look for the best rated recipe, make sure we have all the ingredients, and ensure that we have the time and capacity to bake them to perfection. The same quality of research is crucial to improve the website’s performance.
Research should include identifying tactics used by competitors and high-ranking SERPs, and even what audiences will find engaging. Find what keywords are highly searched and what types of websites pop up. Heck, even check out what the lower ranking pages are doing to analyze what techniques they are missing out on. Any and all strategies should be created on a basis of knowledge on what those in the industry are employing--or avoiding--in their websites.
The site should also include strategy, specifically in user experience, from start to finish. From the search engine to the landing page (remember your alphabet soup!), the user experience should be simple and easy to follow. Without strategies around user friendliness, searchers will not feel inclined to stay on the page, which will increase bounce rates and lower click throughs. The more frustrated users are with the page, the less likely search engines will believe that your website actually offers engaging and valuable content.
Finally, be willing to learn and adapt! If keywords are not effective or ad copy isn’t bringing users to your page, understand that edits may need to be made on your website for search engines to recognize your credibility and offerings to users.
FOR YOUR ANALYTICS:
Without analytics, all of your strategies, content, and work will not be beneficial. Unless you can track your success, and failures, you will be unable to fine tune your own recipe for your website. By joining Google Analytics or similar platforms, you will be able to track clicks on your page, duration, unique users, and other data that will reflect the changes that you can make to your page to be user friendly.
And in Google--your new sous chef in all this cooking up of ideas--your main ingredient will be keywords. By identifying important keywords, both short and long tailed, for your ads and ad groups, your page will be more closely tied to the searches from users. The keywords selected should also relate to the pristine content you’ve already perfected. The more connections between keywords and content, the more search engines will determine that you can provide valuable information to the users.
But above all, don’t be afraid to fail! As with any good chef, experimentation is the key ingredient to finding the perfect recipe. Try different keyword sets, different analytics, and different user experiences to determine if your efforts are being noted by the algorithms. These algorithms change often, so your best bet is to be successful in areas you can control, and work to create patterns of credibility and connections.
When you’ve compiled all of your ingredients and mixed as instructed, bake your plan until well done and voila! You’re on your way to improving the status for your webpage. And while you’re at it, maybe share a little of the tasty treats with the internet fairies. They’ve earned it.
Sources:
Chapter 4
