Shortly after we launch a new website for our clients, one of the first questions many of them ask is, “How can I get my site to the top of Google?” It’s a great question. After all, what good is a beautiful custom website if nobody can find it?
Unfortunately, the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not quite as straightforward and simple as we would like it to be, and as a result we can’t provide an answer that’s as straightforward and simple as we’d like to. As much as we wish that there was a magic button that can launch your website to the top of the listings, there isn’t. Getting a great search position takes time and effort – on our part as well as yours.
Here’s an outline of our SEO philosophy and process, and some steps you can take to ensure the best search rank possible for your website.
1. On-Page Optimization
This is the part of SEO that we handle for you as part of your website’s development and ongoing maintenance – and it's the most crucial to get right. It involves us optimizing the website itself to be easily indexed by Google and other search engines. Here's what that includes:
- Creating the site in a search-friendly way using SEO best practices like responsive mobile-friendly design, clean semantic html markup, proper use of headline tags, secure hosting, etc.
- Optimizing page titles, headlines, meta tags and copy to include the keywords that are most important for you to be found on Google. We do our best to ensure that your site is focused on important search keywords without stuffing your page copy and headlines with obnoxious amounts of keywords.
- Adding and maintaining machine-readable schema to assist Google in identifying your website as a local business.
- Creating and submitting a machine-readable sitemap directly to Google to aid them in the indexing process.
We take an initial best-effort pass at on-page optimization when we initially build the site, then we evaluate the results over time and make ongoing tweaks as necessary.
2. Local Listing Management
This involves ensuring that the major business listing sites on the Internet (like Google, Yelp, and others) are showing consistent and correct information for your practice's locations, and that any duplicate listings are removed. We've found that when this information is consistent in as many places as possible, it's a strong signal to Google's ranking algorithm that your business is a major player in your area.
While you can definitely claim and manage your local listings manually, we recommend using a service like Moz Local to take care of the heavy lifting for you. We can also assist with this – just let us know how we can help.
3. Reviews
Another major signal to Google's algorithm for local businesses is online reviews – both on Google and on other trustworthy sites. If you don't already have a review strategy in place, we’d love to help you create a successful review campaign. Just reach out to your project manager to get started.
4. Fresh Content
Google loves local business sites that contain helpful information and provide valuable resources to the community. The best ways we've found to do those things is by creating service-specific landing pages to capture more traffic for people searching for a certain service (like dental implants or Invisalign) and by writing blog articles that center around important keywords or topics.
If you'd like to begin posting blog articles to your site, just let us know – we include blog functionality at no additional charge. We also offer the option of having our writer prepare a monthly article for your blog.
As with most aspects of marketing, SEO is all about a good long-term strategy and patience. No one is going to hack Google in a month, but if you do the right things, your site will naturally climb to the top over time.
