SEO: How to position your website in Google Search?

Whether or not a site makes it to the first page of search results for a particular query depends on Google’s ranking factors, which index the site and determine its attractiveness to the user. If the indexing bots “don’t see” the page, there is little chance that it will rank high in the organic search results. Currently, there are about 250 factors that affect a website’s visibility. Proper optimization of the site for search engines and known algorithms is half the battle that affects successful SEO.

SEO & website positioning — what is it used for?

Any brand, which wants to make a name for itself on the Internet should carry out all the necessary SEO activities on that site. Every day users type hundreds of thousands of queries that lead to the websites in question. For the e-commerce industry, such statistics can contribute to organic website traffic, which is definitely cheaper than any other marketing efforts. However, you need to make sure that prospective customers come across your online business. Successful SEO depends on a number of factors, but it is definitely worth following SEO principles that can significantly affect your site’s visibility in SERPs (search engines results pages) and minimize the bounce rate.

A site that is optimized for indexing bots is search engine friendly. In consequence, it is indexed faster and ultimately more visible to the user.

Effective website positioning – but how?

Website positioning is a long-term process, evident even after a few months of implementing the first optimization processes. Any changes aimed at improving visibility in search results should start with your own site, through an internal audit. It is also worthwhile to conduct a competitive analysis, which helps to determine the market saturation in a particular industry, but it is also useful in drawing a conclusion vis-à-vis the activities of your own business.

Any action on a website to help increase its visibility in search results can be divided into several parts – both on-site and off-site. Meticulously and properly carried out activities, which will be implemented in accordance with the principle of White Hat SEO, will affect effective SEO.

Defining the target group and location

First of all, you need to define the scope and purpose of our activities. The e-commerce industry may operate in a wider region, but local hairdressing or construction businesses should focus more on local positioning. When it comes to SEO and targeting a particular audience located in a specific city, it will be useful to take action not only within the site. It’s worth, and even necessary, establishing a Google My Business profile to help promote your business locally.

Determining the audience group, by gender and age, will make it easier to tailor the content and design of the site for a given user. These are factors that affect UX, and thus are significant for the amount of time a user will stay on the website.

Keyword research – choose relevant keywords 

This is one of the most important aspects of successful SEO because it is ultimately through keywords or specific queries that a user arrives at a site through a search engine. That’s why it’s so important to choose the right keywords to use not only in the headlines, and in the store description, but also in the title and description, in the categories and their descriptions, in the blog content, and in the tags. Keywords relating to the home page and subpages, must be woven into the text naturally to be friendly to Google crawlers, but also to the users themselves.

It is important to select phrases for your site (keyword tools will be useful here) so that the user can get to your site thanks to them. They are distinguished between several phrases and queries:

• brand keywords – these are keywords that directly target the company name or a specific product and brand that the user is looking for.
• local keywords – referring to the place, company and industry. They target user inquiries about a particular region, such as the best dentist in London, hairdresser Brighton, and construction services in Bristol.
• long tail keywords– it is worth using them, especially in the e-commerce industry, as they help users find what they are looking for and allow them to narrow down the search field. The use of long tail phrases is useful, especially in industries with massive competition, such as shoe companies. The chances of a user finding a just-opened online shoe store just by using the ‘winter shoes’ phrase are slim. So you need to expand the phrase with additional defining words, such as red leather winter boots with thick heels.
• guide keywords– how, where, what for, and why are questions worth using especially in blog articles. Users type them into the search engine when they want to learn something, and get answers to their questions, such as what is the best pizza parlor in Warsaw, how to protect the garden for winter, 5 ways to have healthy hair. It is worth using these queries in blog texts on the site.

Read more about keyword research on our blog:

• Keyword analysis – what is it?
• Long tail keywords – what are they?

Head section of the website

The homepage of the site should be search engine- and user-friendly in terms of keywords, which must be skillfully woven into the head section, that is, the page title, title and description, and headings.

Meta title and meta description – website traffic is largely generated by giving the right title that encourages the user to click through to the site. If the title matches the query, and the description further confirms the relevance of the query, then these two factors will affect the successful positioning of the site. It is definitely worth applying these tags to each page and subpage, while remembering that title must not exceed 60–70 characters, and the description — 160 characters (currently, because this parameter also changes slightly).

Headings (H1–H6) – this is a very important part of effective SEO, so you need to use heading tags, which will include keywords woven in naturally. Indexing bots scan a page from the top, so the <h1> heading should contain the phrase most relevant to the site, category, subcategory or product description.

Friendly URL – SEO is also affected by URLs, which should be user and algorithm friendly. They should be consistent with the page title. The site itself should also have an SSL certificate, which benefits the credibility of the site.

Optimized images – each graphic that will be on the page should be described with alt and title attributes. In addition, images must not be too large, as they slow down the loading speed of the page, and thus affect the rejection rate, known as the bounce rate.

High quality content

Useful, original and unique content contributes to effective SEO. Businesses that care about the quality of the content they post on their site are seeing increasing click-through rates. The Panda algorithm boosts up websites that are full of useful and unique content while carrying content values enriched with relevant keyword phrases and queries. There is a reason why the value of content is appreciated when it comes to website SEO.

A business blog containing a lot of interesting tutorials can attract users to your website. It is definitely worth providing the user with quality content that will keep them browsing the site for longer. Substantive content containing keywords significantly influences its recognition by indexing bots as useful, and thus effective for SEO.

Importantly, no content can be copied from other sites or duplicated within the site, in which case we have what is known as duplicate content. It adversely affects SEO and visibility of the site in the SERPs.

Internal links vs. effective SEO

A proper, clear page structure promotes SEO. Internal links, placed within the site, are a kind of a navigator for the user. Internal linking should be proper in terms of naming, correctness (whether one link leads to another) and efficiency (links must not be inactive or leading to a non-existent page).

Page loading speed, responsiveness and mobile version

These factors influence whether a user stays on the site. A site that loads too slowly or one that does not interact with mobile devices is not attractive to the user, and thus to indexing bots. The website should be optimized for this, as these factors affect Search Engine Optimization.

Social media presence

This is a factor that indirectly affects the effective search engine optimization of the site. A profile on social media facilitates communication with customers and makes a particular company seem decidedly friendlier to them. It’s also a way to share blog content or industry news with the user, which affects the credibility of the company. Ultimately, it’s also another way for users to become familiar with the content of your website.

Effective Search Engine Optimization

Optimization of the site should be carried out consistently and systematically. The website must “live” to be noticed by Google’s bots. SEO is a process, not a one-time activity, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t see increased traffic on your site after a month. Also keep in mind the useful tools that will help you measure the effectiveness of your activities, such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console. You also should follow similar industries, prevailing trends, or relevant algorithms. Effective SEO, however, starts with on-page optimization and publishing unique content.

Would you like to know more about Search Engine Optimization and website positioning? Join Verseo Academy and read our in-depth guides!