Feb 20th 2015

The Top Five Components to Ranking Well Organically

Having a well-optimized site for search engines often guarantees that your website will rank well in the organic search results. However, as stated in this earlier post about ranking well organically, several key items must be taken care of and you have to be sure about some of the following factors:

1)   Design/ Development process
2)   Content
3)   Usability/Accessibility
4)   Search Engine Optimization
5)   Off-site

Let’s analyze them, one by one, in greater detail:

1) The Website Design and Development Process

This is a very broad topic, so let’s just keep our focus simple.

Good Images - Try to insert attractive images, optimizing them for the web (using your keyword terms); then when a visitor comes into your site he will have a quick connection with it. Remember to add keywords as Alt texts for them because crawlers look at descriptions, not images, and it’s just a good rule of thumb.
Design - When you design your website think what will the visitor look for, when visiting it? Think if the placement of elements is attractive for the visitor.
Ensure that contrast levels and text sizes are acceptable, and try using different setups of the copy, as well as asking your colleagues and customers what they think of the new website design.
Consistency - This is a big one and often gets overlooked. Remember that the site has to function consistently, because not having a consistent site yields anxiety and tension with your visitors, which in turn will force them to leave your site.
Testing - If and when you update your site, make sure that you are testing it to make sure that it is working on different computers, and in different browsers.not everyone has your computer and uses Internet Explorer.

2)  Content:

If you haven’t heard this by now, here is something you need to know: Content is the king, and because of this, the content you write has to be compelling and attractive. Otherwise, simply put, visitors will leave the site.  Remember to write for your audience, in a very simple and easy to understand way, and avoiding confusing sentences.  Use articles and press releases for reference in your content. Have a blog and keep it updated so that you will engage visitors and interact constantly with them. Listen to your visitors suggestions, answer their questions, and offer them effective solutions.  Be sure to fulfill your goals when writing for your visitors, offer and display what they are looking for. Match your goals with your visitors’ wants or likes and you will start to see your community of followers grow.

3)   Usability

Usability could be defined as a quality of the website,and to be honest, the usability of a website is the key for survival on on the Internet. If your website is difficult to navigate, people will leave and your bounce rate will increase. If users do not find what they want/need, they will leave and try to get it in other site. Some of the ways you can improve “usability” are easy to implement:

 

  • Observe visitor behavior (through Analytics): where do they succeed, and where are they having difficulties on the website?
  • Give users the ability to inform you about how easy your site is to navigate, or what some of their suggestions for improvements would be
  • Is the website pleasantly designed? Is boring? Tacky? Complicated? Too crowded?
  • Does the site do what users want or need?

4) On-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Since we are talking about the five ways to help you rank organically, of course we are going to talk about SEO. Here is where your focus should be with SEO:

  • Write compelling content (we said content is King), adding consistent and relevant titles to each page in your website (preferably with keywords associated with your services or products). Check to make sure content is not too short and that you’ve clearly wrote the content of the page.
  • Link to your internal pages, because it is very important to internal links, as well as external links, in your website. This is actually a step that is very important and overlooked a greater majority of the time.
  • Check and optimize your keywords for performance. Are you getting the right kind of visitors? Change, improve, and strengthen your keyword strategy regularly. Using the right keywords and the right quantity of them is the at the core of your organic result success and will ensure great results in your strategy.

5)   Off-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The whole goal of gaining links back to your site is to build trust and authority to your site. It sounds simple enough, but there are some smart ways to go about gaining those valuable links. Here are but a few (and all white hat!)

  • Go to forums, blogs and portals and hang out; offer advice.  Do not spam. (Raise your right hand and repeat after me: I...will never...ever...spam)
  • Listen your visitors, interact with them; listen your competitors, potential clients, so you can learn from them about what to improve in your site.
  • Encourage viral promotion.  Spread the word among your regular customers and followers and tell your friends or colleagues something unique about you, your site, your product or services.
  • Be yourself; don’t try to imitate somebody else, be authentic and natural when interacting with your customers.
  • Do not spam.  When you do it you lose respect and will be flagged on the Internet. Plus, you’ve already sworn you won’t, so this doesn’t effect you, right???
  • Be present on Social Media.  Open an account on Facebook for your site or product and invite people to become friends. Engage and interact constantly on Twitter by answering consumer comments, especially to claims or concerns, and offering up content to your followers.

There is no short-cut to ranking well organically. It takes time, a clear strategy, hard-work and determination. But the return on investment that you gain from your efforts will impact your bottom line and most importantly, ensure that your business still has a future. Remember this: the biggest return on investment with Internet Marketing, by far, is that your company will still be in business in five years...