Last week, I delved into some essential steps you need to take if you want to boost your website’s search engine rankings and get it in front of more eyes. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend you start there and then come back to read the rest here.
Alright, if you’re reading this, I’m going to assume you’ve already read part 1. Shall we continue?
Step 4: Watch Your Website Speed
NO ONE wants to wait forever for a website to load. If your site hasn’t loaded within 5 seconds, people will go to your competitor and never think about your company again. And a high bounce rate = a lower ranking on Google.
That is why it is crucial that you have a low bounce rate on each page of your website. So, how do you know if you even have a high bounce rate in the first place? Check your analytics.
If you have Google Analytics installed on your website, you can easily see what your overall bounce rate is, and (even more importantly) your bounce rate for each page. So, if you have a conversion piece and you’re paying for people to get to that page, but your bounce rate is too high, you’re going to want to work on bringing that bounce rate down.
On Google Analytics, you can also see the average time visitors spend on each page. If visitors are spending little to no time on each page and your bounce rate is through the roof, it’s time to think of some new tactics.
First, you will want to make sure that your website loads properly on both desktop and mobile. If not, this needs to be fixed immediately. When all of the pages on your website load in a reasonable amount of time, the focus should then be on keeping your customers there. Remember, just because they visit doesn’t mean they’ll stay.
Want to reduce that bounce rate? Keep visitors engaged! The key here is that you want people to stay on your website longer, but you don’t want to waste their time. Meet them where they are by giving them something they’ll actually care about. That could be a pop-up offering a special discount, or it could be pieces of content that they care about. Always do your research to determine what would resonate with your audience the most, otherwise you could end up turning them away.
Include Backlinks
Here’s a little SEO secret: you receive a stamp of credibility when your website is linked on other sites. For example, if a blog post shares a link back to your website, it is not only benefiting you by increasing the number of people who will visit your site, but it is also helping with your Google ranking.
It is also important to build links on your own website. For example, if you have a blog on your website, link to other high-quality articles that are already considered to be credible. Link building allows you to show that you have important information to share on your website as well.
Google knows all, and details like the number of backlinks to your website make all the difference when fighting for the limited space at the top of the search results.
Why It All Matters
Have you ever really considered what it means to be at the top of the search engines for your most effective keywords? Obviously, it means you’ll get a lot more traffic than you would otherwise, but it goes much deeper than that.
When customers see your website listed at the top of any given search, they will immediately assign some kind of authority to your brand. It’s only natural. Without even realizing it, their brains are saying: if Google believes this website should be at the top, then they’re obviously doing something right.
It’s also important to remember that SEO doesn’t happen in a vacuum. We’ve already talked about your competition several times in this post, but it deserves to be spelled out clearly once again:
If you’re not doing SEO, your competition is. If you skip all that keyword research, link building, and the other important optimization strategies, then they’ll be more than happy to take the top spot instead.
