Website SEO for top Google Searches

SEO for Top Google Searches

Penny Hunt, 17 November 2021.

SEO is search engine optimisation

The whole point of SEO is to make your website show up higher in Google searches and other search engines when people search for stuff. If you are here, you probably already know what SEO is.

To get more traffic for your website, you want it to come up higher in the search results. You can pay money to Google or other search engines with sponsored ads to put your site at the top of the list when someone searches for something that is relevant to your site.

Or, if you know how to do it yourself - well, that's what this article is all about.

It's an arms race between Google and everyone else, and Google has very deep pockets. But there are all sorts of subtle ways to outsmart even the best spam filters, so there are lots of things you can do that won't cost you a cent. Which brings us back to why you would want to bother doing this in the first place.

Optimisation for Search Rank

SEO is the process of improving your website's rankings in search results. For most websites, it's also the primary way people find your site.

The best SEO plan will depend on what kind of website you have. Different websites attract different kinds of users, and your SEO should reflect your users' needs.

Google is the biggest search engine by far, but there are other search engines out there (Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc), not to mention social media, online forums, and so on. You don't want to optimise for Google alone; you want to optimise for all of them.

The Best SEO in 2022

The best optimisation for search engines in 2022 will be a mix of two things: creating your own content and using the best SEO tools to improve the content you already have.

1. Website Content is King

Creating your own content is still going to be essential. If you want to rank at the top of search results for a popular search term, you need a lot of high-quality content about that subject. And if you don't want to do it yourself, there's no one else who can do it for you, unless you fork out heaps for a specialist copywriter.

2. Using SEO Tools

SEO tools are going to be less essential than your actual website content. In theory they can give you an edge and guide you on the right path, but they won't be absolutely necessary. In fact some people will probably discover that they're a distraction from the real work of creating good content. For example, the quality of your writing is more important than how often you update an article. You can optimize an article by rewriting it or by using a particular keyword in the title - but if no one reads it in the first place, what difference is it going to make?

Rank in Google Searches

Best Practice SEO for ranking in Google Searches is to include the following elements in your site:

1. Keyword Rich Title Tags

The title tag is the name of your page as it appears in the browser window. It should contain your top niche keywords and be kept as short as possible, no more than 60 characters; this is to make it easy to read. Some search engines will truncate titles longer than this, so it's best not to go past this limit.

2. Keyword Rich Meta Description

The meta description is a paragraph that describes your page and is indexed by search engines; it is not displayed on the page when viewed in a browser. It should contain around 150 characters and should include relevant keywords and phrases (these will be ranked in search results and may pull in traffic). Be careful however not to include too many keywords or you may be flagged as spam. If you use a template for creating pages, you can often a description for each page automatically.

3. Keyword Rich Page Titles

The question of whether to use h1 or not, or which number to use if you do, is hotly debated. The fact that it is hotly debated is a good indication the answer is "it depends." Page layout matters more than most people realise. It's too easy to click on the first heading, read the page, and close the browser without ever noticing any other part of the website. If your page doesn't have a clear visual hierarchy of information, people won't notice your web page has any further content.

It's a good idea to always use h1 for the page title, and then h2 or h3 for subheadings. Try to include your niche keywords in headings and the main subheads, but avoid keyword stuffing.

What will Search Engines Look Like in 2023?

I think one of the following two things is likely:

A single search engine, which has become the default search engine for most people, has become so dominant that it can no longer improve its index. It just crawls the web once a month, and returns the list of sites it found.

Or ten or twenty major search engines, none of which have managed to crawl more than a fraction of the entire web, so they are all constantly racing to be first with each new site.

We hope this blog post has helped you to understand a bit more about optimisation for online search engines. If you have any questions about optimising your own website project, please feel free to contact us and also check out more tips for effective SEO website content.