How to improve website placing on Google?

So basically what is the best way to push your website so that appears higher in google?

Been using Webmaster tools, added a site map, no crawl errors, SEO settings all seem in working order, just don't know what else I can do to move up the rankings.

Any help would be muchos appreciated.

First of all what CMS if any are you using? Webmaster Tools and a sitemap are a very good start, but this only makes Google aware of your site.

There is no way of reverse engineering or otherwise endearing Google to notice your site above others aside from the content you put out. Content is the most important thing. In fact, if you are using a CMS, much of the typical work of an SEO is done for you.

Google works by recognising signals it considers objective measurements of quality of content. Outside of your content, these are largely external factors you control by appealing to your audience, and outreach.

Your website and pages are relevant to specific search queries largely dependent on the keywords you use. Including rich content such as images, videos and external linking (references) helps. That is one reason why blogs can be so successful. If you are using relevant keywords to describe your content then you need to focus mainly on 3 things:

1. Structure of content, such as good internal linking, navigation and using appropriate titles <h1> and headers (<h2>, <h3>)
2. Earning inbound links
3. Earning social media shares and upvotes (likes, shares, +1s, tweets etc.)

If you can't do the above you have one of the following problems:

1. Your site lacks a coherent focus, structure and content strategy
2. Your site is not original, entertaining, useful or informative enough for anybody to consider linking to it
3. You are not sharing your content enough (via social media, e-mail, word of mouth, blogging etc.) and in such a way as to encourage sharing and upvotes

(4. There are thousands of other sites with the same content that are already established and without 2. and 3. you have no chance in hell of getting any traffic.)

Always bear in mind that it can take at least a few weeks to several months for Google to pick up on your site. Google makes no guarantee it will index even one page on your site, although it usually will index at least a few pages. Which pages it chooses to index depend largely on the search queries used to find and click through to your site and the quality of the content on those pages.

Source: professional SEO experience

That's my job. If you give me a link I can get a better idea.

In short, grow the site by adding content and optimizing current pages for keywords.
Step number 1 is assigning one keyword to each page. The more specific the keyword, the easier to rank.

Social media doesn't really matter, nor does getting people to link to the site. There is a 80/20 split. With linking and social media in the 20%, and all the internal stuff in the 80%.

Yes, that is getting your site to rank for certain keywords at all and then more niche keywords and the long-tail, long keywords of three to five or even more words. If a site is so badly optimised that it won't even rank then yes it has a poor keyword usage or structure or even mark up issues.

When it comes to competitive seo, i.e. ranking in the top 50, you need to consider a link building strategy that social media is part of. Quality content and outreach are the only ways to achieve that.

It is really not that difficult to optimise your site for keywords, but to rank highly you need evidence your site is any good.

Ever since day 1 of google that has been about link building, for the most part this hasn't changed, only Google has worked very hard to weed out spamming link strategies that will penalise your site. To say otherwise is directly counter to what Google publicly advise themselves. External links from relevant, quality pages is pretty much the highest ranking factor, unless your site is just rubbish and/or you have spam links, although social media has continually become more important. Somebody with a link from the New York Times quoting their site as a source is going to do better than someone with a link from their mum. Somebody with 1000 Facebook shares and no links is going to be better off than someone with no links and no shares.

You might optimise your site for keywords only and get listed somewhere, and organically gain traction over time, but that is a gamble and most people want results sooner than a few months to even years. Google picks up on an exponential increase in external links for sites with a high page rank well, as that is largely how Google is (and always has been) designed to figure out. Social media is almost as important, on average (as quality of sites vary massively), I'd say as (or even more) important.

This is assuming that typically most sites are not as original as they think and there is usually well established content already out there.

It is much easier to rank for something like a brand name that is a made up or unusual combination of words, as that is usually the first goal of establishing a website, or it should be. You can do that with keywords and site structure. But most people want to attract customers around certain subjects as well, that is more challenging.

I think the 80 20 split manny says is about right if you are focusing on technical and content seo, but once your site is keyword optimised, you need to go further, and you can start work on those things from the very beginning by focusing on quantity content people want to share. No matter how good your technical seo is, you can't be competitive if your content doesn't appeal.

Why did Google invested in their own social network ???

Answer: more quality content signals from real people. Better search results. More visitors. More advertisers. Better click through. More profit.

Everything Google does revolves around their core business of Search and ppc advertising, even Android and Chrome.

So today, actually social signals form a large part of determining what real people consider quality content. Keywords alone were the most important factor before Google even existed. And Google is a progressive company, updating their search algorithms as often as every few weeks.

This chart will help a lot.



But this is a lot of detail. You need to focus on quality content targeting specific keywords first as manny says.

1cmanny1 wrote:In short, grow the site by adding content and optimizing current pages for keywords.
Step number 1 is assigning one keyword to each page. The more specific the keyword, the easier to rank.

You can also consider theme words around the site and a few keyword variations. It's increasingly important for the whole site to cover higher level, more categorical words that describe the focus of the site. But on any one page the main keyword should feature in the usual places:

Title (as in browser bar)
URL slug
Article header (h1)
Subheadings (h2)
Meta description
Link text (navigation, internal linking)
<strong> text
IMG alt tag and file name

Only a few instances are necessary. Never stuff a page with keywords. It will do more harm than good.

Cheers fellas.

It's odd, appearing on Bing and Yahoo fine just can't seem to get a placing on Google. I've only just added the site map on webmaster tools, maybe that will help with the indexing. Going to read through your posts more thoroughly to digest.

EDIT: I have already added plenty of content words and the stuff Gecko mentioned in this last post.

The sitemap is only validated and accepted, you need to check back sometime later to see how many pages have been indexed. And indexed pages does not necessarily mean they will show up in search results.

I think that chart (while interesting) is misleading. Social media activity is more of a result of good rankings, not a cause. Also linking is no where near as important as it used to be, and again is more of a result of good rankings (of course having a NY Times link to your site would be great, but how the hell are you supposed to do that?). While it probably all contributes to SEO, I wouldn't worry about it until much later down the track.

Just have a think about keywords that consider important, use keyword planner on Adwords to make sure there is traffic behind them, and then assign them to pages on your site. If there aren't enough pages, create more. Stuck for new page ideas yet have tons of keywords? Create a blog.
Once you have done that, start optimising the page content for the keywords.

Also as GG said, Google can take ages to crawl your site. Even if you submit it via webmaster, there is no guarantee that it will be crawled anytime soon.

Also before any of this, I hope you have Analytics installed on your site. If not, that is the first step.

Show us your site man!

Indeed links aren't as important as they used to be. But that is particularly because social proof now is. The use of theme words around the site, so it does not appear you just have specific pages optimised, also is, amongst many other things.

Social media campaigns are part of any good seo / inbound marketing strategy now no matter how much old school seo doesn't want to bother with it. It's an excellent way to encourage sharing and linking to your site. And of course Google is going to respond to a huge surge in quality indicators (that is people linking and sharing content, the way Google has always ranked sites above and beyond keywords) found in social media. They did this by investing in building their own social network. It is basic business sense. Most clients are interested in accelerating that and starting with sharing your site with friends and family, that absolutely should be part of not necessary optimising your site but as part of boosting your rankings.

A link building campaign is very difficult so maybe you or your employers don't touch it, nonetheless it is very important, maybe it is a higher end product or something someone else manages in your work, I almost guarantee it.

Even just setting up some social networks and linking them to your site helps corroborate that your site stands above others in terms of presence and that is easy. It helps demonstrate that effort has gone into your site, there are obviously more signals that it is quality content as there is something behind it. There are other things you can do if you are a business but we don't know any of that here.

Search metrics is one of the leading research blogs on seo, it is worth checking in on although of course there is a huge amount of debate and contention around seo as much of it is educated guesswork as Google reveal very little. It is an area of constant research that must be sustained.

Besides technical seo, since we have to respect that Google is very good at weeding out rubbish, we start to discuss more inbound marketing and content strategy, it becomes a much bigger beast. That is all part of what the biggest and greatest agencies in the industry are doing.

The funny part is it arrives back at Google's own maxim. Content is King.

That content includes social media and every little bit of content you put out right down to your meta descriptions and posts on social networks. This should be considered holistically.

If your content is excellent and your promote it effectively you will get links, and if your pages are keyword optimised then it will rank. There are no shortcuts (apart from ppc).