Are you looking for Google to send people to your website? Keep reading. This is where I tell everyone to start.
If you want search engines to send people to your website, it all boils down to 3 things. In this order.
- Content
- Links
- User Signals
Quick refresher of the top level game plan. We need Content. Then we need Links. Then we need healthy User Signals.
Content:
What content to publish?
Identify a target website visitor. In a perfect world, who is Google sending to your website. Find someone that matches your criteria and have a conversation with them. Ask them “if you were looking for {topic of the content you are publishing on line}, what do you type into Google search?”
Take the search terms these target visitors provide you.
Go to Google. Search for these terms. Look at the entire 1st page of Google. Click every link. What content do you find. Text, images, videos? Articles, product pages, directory sites, big brands, local businesses? Determine a search term your budget will allow you to search for.
The shorter the search term the more competition.
The longer the search term, the less volume of people searching.
Create and publish content that is a good result for the search terms you are wanting to rank for.
After you publish this content. Connect Google Search Console to your website. Give Search Console some time to gather data.
Google Search Console will tell us what search terms Google is testing your website for. If they are the search terms you are after, great. If they aren’t the search terms you are after, we need to correct course.
Links
Links are votes. Votes for valuable content.
Start with internal links. Make sure your website is linking to the pages on your own website you want Google to send traffic.
Backlinks are links coming from other domains to your website.
Start with your social media profiles. Link your LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, imdb profile, yelp, and any additional profiles to your website.
You don’t have to link to your home page. If you have a page that is better suited for sending people and search engines, link to this page.
User Signals
What are humans doing on your website after Google leads them to your URL? Are they happy with this page? If Google sees good user signals, Google will send more traffic. If Google sees unhappy user signals, Google will send future traffic to a different URL.