How to Get a Good SEO Ranking
SEO ranking is the result of a series of complex measures and techniques. In this article we will try to explain them in a simple, easy-to-understand way.
But before answering the question, a few basic concepts need clarifying:
- What is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, the set of techniques and improvements that aim to make a website (or a page) appear in search engine results. These optimisations cover text content, multimedia content, the site's URLs, the site structure and the accessibility of the information it contains.
- Keywords: these are the search terms you want your site to rank for, and therefore the words to focus on in order to appear at the top of the results. They are usually the products or services the business offers (sometimes combined with the town where the service or product is offered, if the business is local).
To achieve a good ranking, in addition to the technical SEO optimisations carried out during the design and development phase, you need to monitor the site's performance regularly through traffic, audience and behaviour statistics and to publish original content often, up to date, interesting and relevant, written with SEO in mind.
But how do you write with SEO in mind?
When users need information, a service or a product, they open a search engine (such as Google) and start typing what they need. The first step is therefore to understand how users search for your services online: to do this you can rely on keyword research and analysis tools, which provide valuable information on search volume (how many times a given word is searched), seasonality and location ("snow boots" will be a much more common search in winter and in mountain areas). This way you can decide which topics to focus your attention and work on.
Do not confuse writing with SEO in mind with keyword stuffing. It is not enough (and it is counterproductive) to fill the text with keywords inserted without any logic, for two reasons:
- the text becomes hard to read and does not flow well, and users would struggle to find the information they are looking for;
- search engines notice: over the years they have learned to use artificial intelligence and to reason almost like users, so they tend to favour content written for people and not for the search engines themselves.
Other measures that help ranking in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page, the page of results on search engines) are:
- creating the sitemap and submitting it to Google Search Console
- adding original content to the site, never duplicated from other sites (or even from your own site!)
- adding meta tags and meta keywords
- using short URLs that contain the target keywords
- linking your social networks to the site and often sharing on social media links that lead to the site (how? Read here)
- opening and updating a Google My Business listing (what is it? We covered it in this article)
- making sure you place a link to your site on other websites relevant to your business
But how do you put all these measures into practice? By turning to web professionals, like our communication agency, which has been designing websites for more than 20 years and constantly keeps up to date with all the main developments in website creation and SEO. Contact us for a consultation!
