SEO: Know What Helps to Get You to The Top!

If you have a website and you’re pretty serious about it, chances are that you’ve dedicated a substantial amount of time (and money) to get to the first page (if not the number one position) in Google’s search results. But has your hard work paid off? Or do you still see your website struggling at the 4th page of the search results, in spite of all your efforts?

Though improving your Page Rank with Google is not as easy as it sounds, but it’s not that difficult either. All you need to remember is that YOU CAN’T FOOL GOOGLE! Later (if not initially) you will get caught for all the black-hat SEO techniques, and your website will suffer a terrible death. Don’t believe it? That’s exactly what happened to millions of websites when Google released its Penguin and Panda updates.

So, what constitutes a good Google practice? Always keep in mind: if you think it’s (ethically) wrong to do what you’re doing, then probably it is in the eyes of Google too. Having said that, here are a few quick tips by seo company in Halifax to get you started on your climb up the Page Rank ladder:

1. Link It Up!
   There are various types of links that you can do in your website. But when it comes to search engine optimization, perhaps the best ones are backlinks and crosslinks.

Backlinks are when you have visitors directed to your website through other websites. For instance, let’s say your website is about dog breeds and a visitor is visiting another website about house dogs. He/she sees a hyperlink about breeds, and is directed to your website when he/she clicks on it. It’s one of the best ways to get traffic to your website and Google sees backlinks as proof of quality of your website: the more backlinks (mind you, relevant ones) you have to your site, the more it’s valued by Google.

And then you have crosslinks that interlinks the different pages of your website. Let’s say your visitor is reading about the kind of exercise a certain dog breed requires and sees a hyperlink to the kind of grooming it requires. The visitor is more likely to click on that link, thus spending more time in the site as a whole. How does this help? The longer a visitor stays on your website, the better it is in the eyes of Google.

2. Be Active Socially:
   Social media is where you’ll find your audience and prospective clients. If people like your offerings, they will talk about you and share it with their friends and family. So if you’re good, it will create a buzz in social media. Google has also come in terms with this, and thus has started adding weightage on how much your website it talked about on social media.

The more active you are on social media – that is the greater number of people are talking about you in these platforms- the better it is for your Page Rank. So, go ahead, be socially active – it’s fun and it helps you in more ways than one. Last word? It’s not possible to be active on all social media platforms as that takes a lot of effort. But you may want to include Google Plus in your list. After all, you are trying to rank on Google Search, and faring well on Google Plus may just earn you brownie points!

3. Get Your Hosting Right!
   Well, this point may come as a surprise as not many SEO strategies include hosting as one of the factors. But, if you ask me, it’s one of the most (if not the most) important things that will affect your Page Rank.

Let’s take an example. Let’s say you have a website and it goes viral on social media. It has just the right amount of links, and other websites consider you as an authority figure in your niche. But the problem is that your website experience constant downtime. Most of the times, it shows an error in loading, or loads at a snail’s pace. All thanks to your affordable web host. Result? Visitors eventually turn away from your site. So now you’ve lost your traffic. But wait, things get worse. Google takes into consideration the loading time of your site while deciding Page Rank, so a slow-loading site will never get you to the top.

So don‘t look only for cheap options. Go for a web host that has reliable services at competitive prices. To help you out, here’s a list of affordable web hosting providers that have been ranked as per customer ratings.

Optimizing your website for search engines takes a lot of effort. But you need to work smart as well. Constantly analyze your website performance through tools given in Google analytics. If you’ve employed a certain strategy that is not helping you see the desired results, then maybe it’s time to change tactics.

But before you do all this, concentrate on getting great content. You can only be successful online if your content is king. So get your content right, and the rest will eventually follow.