What does consistency have to do with your website showing up in Google search? That’s your first SEO ranking tip: Google loves consistent content. Consistency is a good thing to have in your business. Consistent design helps build your brand and consistent workflows help you save time and create a good client experience.
Today we’re talking a little bit about consistency, and I have been learning a lot about consistency recently, because my husband Aaron and I became real live foster parents when our first foster placement arrived at the end of January. If you don’t know, kids love consistency and routine, especially foster kids, because there’s a lot of disruption and change in their life, so I actually made a visual schedule that shows what each day has in store, like get up, get dressed, go to school, and so on, and so on.
Of course, consistent content helps your SEO, and helps build your audience.
If you’re listening to this and haven’t started working on optimizing your site and content yet, SEO may be something you want to work on in 2019. even if you don’t work exclusively with local clients, SEO can still really help impact and grow your business. It’s basically like free marketing, or even kind of like free advertising, because your content gets out there in front of clients, on social media, and in Google search results.
But today’s big question is, why are you not showing up in Google search? You’ve done all the keywords, you think, and you’re using the SEO plugin, so what’s the deal? First of all, I just want to clarify, if you are on WordPress and you are using an SEO plugin, you do actually have to fill in the data.
I have seen people who install the Yoast or all-in-one SEO plugin, and they’re like, okay, I’ve optimized it. I have the plugin installed. No, no. You do actually have to fill in details in the plugin boxes, so make sure if you are using the plugin, you’re actually filling in those boxes. But back to the question, why are you not showing up in Google search?
First, you have to know that a website ranking in search is not immediate.
If you create a website, it’s not going to appear in Google the very next day. If you add some keywords to your blog post titles, it’s not going to jump to the top of the search results. It takes anywhere from four days to four weeks for Google’s robots to index your website, but indexing does not mean it’s going to rank. It just means Google now knows your website exists. The bots read the content and then send that info back their servers.
There are some other tools that then also evaluate the content and see if it’s worthy enough to rank in search results. If you’re antsy enough, you can actually go into Google Analytics, and then search console, and submit your site to Google that way, but again, even doing this won’t guarantee indexing that day, nor does that mean you will rank in Google.
The second reason your website might not be ranking in Google is that your content optimization is not good enough.
In simplest terms, I always describe SEO as using the words that your ideal clients are searching, but many people don’t think this through clearly enough, and often use terms that are too either descriptive, or terms that are just industry jargon that your clients aren’t using. Something like the phrase maternal nutrition, something like the phrase maternal nutrition may be too technical, while dietitian for moms or nutrition help for moms may be something that moms actually search for.
One of the ways you can figure out what people are searching for is doing keyword research with keyword tools, and Google has one, but also you could ask about this in your inquiry form on your website. In my own inquiry form, I have one question asking how the person found me, and if it was on Google, what did they search? A lot of people who find me on Google either say they searched Atlanta graphic designer, something about Squarespace, or design for coaches and there’s several other terms that have come up, but those are the most common.
If you really want to focus on optimizing your content, be specific and use keywords. Instead of just writing a blog called Four Workouts for Women, title it something more specific like Four Ab Workouts for Busy Moms. This could help you also create more content because you could do Four Ab Workouts for Moms, then Three Full Body Workouts for Moms, and so on.
Here’s another easy SEO ranking tips: instead of trying to put all the workouts in one blog post, divide them up. Then you can also link these blog posts together. Just a simple hyperlink at the top or the bottom saying, “Hey, if you’re interested in some ab workouts, or some full body workouts as well, I also have some of those over here,” and of course this is just an example. It doesn’t have to be just for moms. It can be whatever demographic you’re serving or whatever it is that you do, but hopefully this example shows you how you can split up content to be more specific, and in separate posts. As an added bonus, once you have several blog posts written about workouts for moms or whatever your topic is, create a page, not a post, a page, where the links to all of these posts can be found.
I have a page on my website for all of my SEO ranking tips, so it has blogs, and videos, and even an ebook about SEO. If I’m in a Facebook group, and I see someone asking for SEO resources or help, it’s easy for me to just grab this one link, and they can see all that I have to offer on one page, rather than just sending them to one measly blog post. But the great news is that you can also optimize this page as well, which can also help your SEO. Lastly, you may not be ranking in Google because you don’t have enough content.
I don’t know if you remember all the way back to your grade school years, but I do, and one of the things that I remember is AR reading and tests, and AR stands for accelerated reading, if you’re not familiar. Basically, books were given an AR level, so you knew which books were good for you to read based on your reading level. You also had to take tests to make sure you understood the book and comprehended everything, and you had a goal for how many points to get each semester, and you also got points for passing tests. Stay with me.
This does relate to content and SEO ranking tips, I promise. If you read really short and easy books, they didn’t have as many points associated with them. That meant to reach your goal, you had to read a lot more books. If you read harder or longer books, you got more points. This is really similar to how content and SEO work. If you only have a little bit of content on your site, meaning only a few pages, no blogs or very few blogs, you only get a few quote unquote “points.”
Whereas if you have more content on your site for Google to read, you get more quote unquote “points.” Again, this is totally just a hypothetical analogy. Google does not actually have points associated with your content, but this is why whenever my clients ask me about tips for ranking their website, I tell them they just need to start creating content. You need to give Google more data to read.
