Optimising your business to get it on Google

Last updated 01.04.2020

To get your business on Google might seem like a struggle. However, there are ways to get around this difficulty: optimising your website is the best way for Google to get your online business to rank highly on its search engine results. And, the better you optimise your website, the more likely it is that your business will rank highly on Google’s search engine.

Moz’s guide to search engine optimisation (SEO) has highlighted the importance of ranking highly on a search engine results page: page one of the results page receives 89.71% of click-through traffic, whereas the second page receives a click-through rate of only 4.37%. By making your online business visible on Google, you are much more likely to see a high traffic flow to your website, which emphasises the importance of having a strong SEO-focused strategy for your website.

Optimise Google’s My Business option 

If you don’t know where to start with your marketing strategy, signing up to the Google My Business listing is a great way to ensure that you are visible on Google’s search engine results.  For those who are uncertain as to what Google My Business is, it is essentially a way for Google to list your business on its search engine in a concise way, including your contact details, opening hours, and Google reviews. Signing up is also pretty easy;

  • Create your account
  • Selected ‘start now’ in the top right-hand corner
  • Enter your business name
  • Enter your business address
  • Select your business category, making it as accurate as possible
  • Add your business phone number and website

If you want more information as to how to navigate yourself around Google My Business then click here.

By signing up to Google My Business, you are more likely to be visible on Google’s search engine results page: if, for example, a user has googled ‘restaurants near me’, Google’s site crawlers can pick up that your location is near to the user, and that you have good reviews, meaning you are more likely to rank highly as your details are a good match.

You can also customise your Google My Business to make your online business seem more appealing, meaning that more people are likely to directly contact you from the results you have given, or click through to your website to see what else you have to offer.

One way you can get creative is by adding emojis to the post section of your Google My Business. Although this might seem a bit unusual, Google is now starting to index (pick up on) emojis on its search engine results! If someone googles an emoji – such as a shoe – and writes ‘near me’, google can actually pick up on your website if you’re a shoe shop and include these emojis within your post.

Use images as a tool

How do you feel when a Google business listing comes up that doesn’t have any images? It’s definitely not going to incite trust and might even put you off using that business altogether. According to Google research, businesses that do have photos get 35% more clicks, showing how important it is to include relevant, high quality images to your Google business listing.

At the least, you should upload a cover photo, which shows up as the main image on the Google business listing, and a profile photo, which is what appears when you upload new information to your listing. Use images that show what your business looks like and accurately reflects the personality of your company. In fact, Google support has recommendations on which are the best business-specific photos to add to give you inspiration.

Images are a useful tool on your website as well, as long as they are properly optimised. When you add a new image to your website, make sure you have a relevant file name and the alt tag (that should appear when you edit the image within your website builder). Alt tags should describe the image in less than 125 characters as if you were describing it to someone with a blindfold on. This means Google can “see” your image and check that it is relevant to your website; if it is, it will rank your site higher up in its search results.

Upload blog posts 

Blogging is a fantastic way to rank highly on the search engine results page. Including keywords within a blog post tells Google’s site crawlers that your website is offering relevant and useful content which matches whatever has been typed into Google’s search engine. This means Google is more likely to index your site, ensuring that your business is visible.

On a more personal level, blog posts can really help you build a relationship between those who visit your site. By offering up free advice, or writing opinion pieces around an area relevant to your business, you are creating a platform of knowledge, telling visitors that you know your stuff and can therefore be trusted. This is also beneficial for SEO: once you’ve succeeded in drawing people to your site, keeping them on your online business for a longer amount of time tells Google that your content is relevant and should thus rank highly.

Before you start all of this, it is paramount to have an attractive, easy to use website. Whilst building a website from scratch might be daunting, KitStart is a fantastic website builder to use, as it doesn’t overcomplicate its services, making building a professional website a hassle-free process.

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