Ranking is the eternal battle of any young startup. Sure, you’ve got a great product. But if you don’t have a website that’s visible, you’re going nowhere, fast. The problem is that getting your site to rank is tricky. It’s not just about spamming out the relevant keywords anymore. Google and other search engines are getting savvy to this. SEO can seem like an endless uphill battle. And even when you think you’ve been successful, suddenly you find your rankings plummeting again. So what can the average startup do to get a decent ranking on the first page of search results? Let’s see.
Prioritize Long-tail Over Short-tail Keywords
Once upon a time it was possible to target short-tail keywords to get your website ranked. But that doesn’t work anymore. The problem is that short-tail keywords are oversubscribed and extremely competitive. It’s unlikely that you’ll rank quickly for a short tail keyword at all. Long tail keywords tend to be a better target. If you run a hair salon in Seattle, don’t just targeting the word “hairdresser.” Target “women’s hairdresser in Seattle” instead. What’s more, Google now punishes websites that target generic keywords, just to get traffic. It wants sites to only appear when the user is interested in the particular service they have to offer. Targeting keywords that aren’t directly relevant to your product won’t help your ranking and could hurt it.
You’ve Got Bad Content
Content which doesn’t have much substance is generally not going to get you very far in today’s world of SEO. Google wants to make sure that when a user goes to your site, that they’re getting real value. They don’t want them to end up reading an article that is essentially a load of spam about your particular keyword. In other words, the user experience matters. In the past, this wasn’t necessarily the case. Before 2010, you could rank high without having great quality content. But today, SEO services are having to evolve. It’s no longer about providing 6,000-word posts that repeat keywords over and over again. It’s about addressing a need in the readership.
Businesses that don’t provide great content could be wasting their time. Firms that churn out rubbish won’t get many shares or Tweets of their content. They’ll struggle to get inbound links. And if any of their customers read their poor content, they may lose business.
You’ve Blocked Google From Seeing Your Web Pages
Believe it or not, it is possible to block Google from crawling your site. Crawling is when Google’s robots click through all of the links on the internet to discover new, searchable content. However, these robots can be blocked by robot.txt files on your site. If you’ve built your own site, you’ll have to edit your own robot.txt files. If you used a website builder, you’ll have to check how to get around the problem with your provider. You may not be able to edit robot.txt files manually. Once the code is removed, Google will once again be able to view your sitemap and all of your web pages.
This article was provided by ellie jo