Networking in… with Kelly Drewett – 3 ways to improve your rank on Google

Networking in… The Wrap Up… with Kelly Drewett

We recently had the privilege of listening to Kelly Drewett in her talk on “Three ways to improve your rank on Google.”

Here is a summary of what she had to say:

When ranking on search engines, there are hundreds of signals that a website sends out. As website owners, our job is to make sure we send out positive signals. Like a handshake to Google, we need to humanise it. It’s a bit like nurturing real-life relationships. 

How do search engines like Google ‘see’ our websites ?

A web crawler, or spider, is a type of bot – a computer programme operated by search engines. 

They trawl the code of a website to find the best content to index: that means they list the content on a search engine result page. There are basics we need to remember that will help search engines to understand and regularly crawl our websites.

How do we keep the search engines happy? 

There are THREE ways for you to make a start.

1. URL, h1, meta-tags.

The URL is the page name (slug or permalink in WordPress). You can find it in the address bar. When it is short, precise and legible – we call it a PRETTY URL.

A h1/Heading 1 is the title of the page, the very first thing the visitor reads on a page. 

Meta-tags are snippets of code. 

WordPress plugins and website builders like Squarespace would call these SEO titles or SEO descriptions.  The point is that the three should correspond. When you’ve chosen a title for a page or a blog post, that title should be used in the pretty URL, as the heading 1, and within the meta-title and meta-description.

Check that you have them aligned on each and every page and post. 

In short, never leave out a heading 1, never leave out the meta-tags, and always create a pretty URL. 

2. Links, links, links.

Search engine crawlers just LOVE links. It’s one way they find new pages or other websites to index. 

Website owners are rewarded when they link  – in TWO ways.

  • Internally, through your own website. 
  • Externally, to other helpful websites within their industry. 

Anytime a link is created, it must help the visitor continue their journey and investigate the topic

Using INTERNAL LINKING, we encourage people (and crawlers) around the website. 

External links have even more value when it comes to SEO gold stars.

  • We can have links going from our website to another – that is outbound
  • We can have links from an external website to our own – that is inbound. These are also known as backlinks and have a significant SEO impact.

Let’s look at INTERNAL LINKS and OUTBOUND links.

These are the ones you can easily incorporate. Add links to pages or posts on your website with little effort.

Google wants to build a network of great information for the visitor. When Google provides good results, people use Google.

When you create content, be generous with links. Link to valuable pages within your website. Help the search engine spider navigate around the website. Link to resources and helpful external web pages that interest the visitor. 

Links contribute to how your website shows up for Google. By using them, you display Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (known as E-A-T).  When the website is trusted, Google ranks the website higher.

Remember, outbound links need to be relevant to the subject. Don’t add random links to a web page or post. Too many random links could be seen as SPAM.

3. Use media

Media such as images and videos help page rank.  They will also rank independently.

Images rank on Google images. Videos produced via YouTube/Vimeo rank for specific key phrases.

  • Images

Humans are visual beings, so images attract our attention and spark emotion. Images draw us in.  Because of this, if your website has appealing imagery, there is more chance of people clicking through it.

Search engines understand this and expect at least one image on every page. Optimise your images by reducing the size and colours – do not add them straight from a camera. 

This will help them download quickly. 

  • Videos

Google shows a video thumbnail for about 25% of search queries. Videos improve search engine optimisation efforts.

Embed videos from YouTube/Vimeo on appropriate web pages and blog posts. Videos keep people on a website longer and engage them with your content. 

Remember, people work with people. Video helps people get to know, like, and trust you

SEO and blogging workshop to improve your Google rank

If you’d like to learn more, Kelly runs regular SEO and blogging workshops Find out more here.

You can also book a 1:1 with her first here, to find out if the workshop is for you.

 

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