How To Get My Website On Google: Your SEO Guide

If you're like many business owners, you're sitting there wondering just how to get your website up on Google so you're at the top of page one and getting all those customers you know are out there – but just can't seem to reach. If you've ever told yourself, “I need to know how to get my website on Google,” then you've come to the right place. Online commerce is critical in today's business world and if you're not at the top of the search engine rankings, you are losing out big time!

There's no question that being on page one, and especially at the top of page one, in the search engine rankings is critical to not only survive as a business but to thrive. Even among the dozens of search engines out there you have the big three of Google, Yahoo, and Bing – and even out of that trio Google stands head and shoulders above them all.

Getting to the top is possible: read on to learn how.

What Do You Need To Get To The Top Of Google?

There's a short answer to this question and a long answer to this question. The short answer is simple: you need good search engine optimization (SEO) to help get your website from where you are to where you want it to be. Most people have at least heard of SEO, and understand that this is the practice of doing all the little things right to get ranked higher in the search engines, but most people aren't aware of just how complicated SEO can be.

There are over 200 known factors that go into consideration when a search engine like Yahoo, Bing, or Google looks at a website. Some are more important than others, but that number should give you pause. Not only that, but what exactly is considered changes all the time. PageRank used to be a major part of gaining SEO authority in Google, but now it has been retired for good – it simply doesn't exist anymore.

Other factors change in importance. A prime example of this is having a mobile-friendly or “responsive” website. Originally this didn't affect things much at all, and then for a while it gave a website a nice little boost or bonus, but wasn't a major factor. However, now it is one of the single most important factors Google looks at when ranking websites. Non-mobile sites are penalized heavily.

Many of the most important factors in ranking are “gray area” in and of themselves. In other words Google talks a lot about “Trust” and “Authority.” So how exactly do they determine if a website is trustworthy or an authority in its niche? Truth be told, no one is 100% sure. There are plenty of clues and certain actions most quality SEO consultants believe can help, but no one but Google knows for sure and even then there probably isn't one guy with a list of every single bullet point that goes under these topics.

Keep in mind those are just the ranking factors that we know about. There are many others that are held close to the vest that most SEO consultants probably don't know about, yet if you want to get the most out of your SEO efforts to shoot your website to the top of the search engine rankings then you need to figure out a way to tackle all of these points and to maintain your website through the multiple changes and adjustments Google and the other search engines use to change how they rank websites.

This is why you need an experienced and talented SEO consultant who can tackle the full time job of taking care of your SEO needs while you keep working on making your business as dependable, reputable, and profitable as possible.

How To Get My Website On Google With On-Site SEO

On-Site SEO, also often referred to as on-page SEO, refers to anything that is actually on the front end of the website that Google looks at. These are the features that most people see. The text, the pictures & multi-media, the design, that sort of thing. This also includes any of the really basic surface level programming such as meta and alt tags, headline tags, and making sure there's a sitemap for search engine spiders to crawl.

There are many different factors that go into optimizing a website to be exactly what Google wants to see, and it is an enormous amount of work whether you're just looking to rank locally or if you want national attention. Most low hanging fruit is found with a little on-site work, yet even changing “little things” can be an enormous amount of work, which is why it is so important to fix up. The better the site looks by SEO standards, the more effective all other work will be in helping it to crawl up the rankings.

Just a short list of major on-site factors include:

• High quality original content
• Recent updates or new content (blogs are great for this)
• Buttons connecting to social media accounts
• Proper alt, title, and meta tags on every page
• Keyword density under 2%
•  Pretty and functional graphics and design
• Multi-media use and long content is a big plus
• How To Get My Website On Google With Off-Site SEO

Off-site SEO can get a little trickier. It requires a lot of knowledge, some technical expertise, and the ability to use advanced tools, connections, and good old fashioned leg work to put together an effective campaign that will get you the results that you are looking for. If you are a complete novice when it comes to the technical side of things online, then you're facing a serious uphill battle to get the off-page SEO factors they way they need to be for your site to succeed.

How good is your hosting, really? Do you understand how backlinks work and what ratio you need to get the right boost out of them without being penalized? Do you know how to link out to authority websites to build trust without building up your competition? These are all extremely important factors that need to be handled very carefully. Getting penalized can be a death sentence for a website, but not having any off-site SEO can doom it to wallow in a trickle of online traffic while your competition gets a flood.

Just a short list of major off-site factors include:

• Quality of your hosting both in speed and up time
• Bounce rate
• Average length of time a reader spends on your website
• Number of high quality backlinks to your website from authority sites in your niche
• The proper variety/percentage of brand name vs. keyword anchors for your backlinks
• How many years your domain name is purchased for
• The age of your website/URL

You Must Avoid Major Penalties!

This is maybe the single most important piece of SEO advice that anyone can receive, and is often a reason many businesses either hire a full time SEO consultant, or even an entire department in-house: so they don't have to worry about updates and learning what changed. Someone else will handle it.

While there are over 200 different ranking factors, this doesn't mean all of them are equal in importance. Not having alt tags on photos isn't going to sink any website. On the other hand, spamming the alt tags with tons of keywords will get a website penalized (meaning knocked out of the rankings completely) and that can be virtually impossible to recover from.

Major penalties include blatantly manipulating or spamming backlinks to your website, keyword stuffing your content, having malware on your website, or having a website that is not mobile-friendly and doesn't have a mobile friendly version. Those are the most common reasons to be penalized, but there are actually many more.

Why You Need Professional SEO Help

Good search engine optimization is not only a challenge, it is a full time job by itself. If you are working to build up a new company or business then you need to focus on taking care of your customers, building up your advertising, and building up the type of reputation that gets you to the top of your field. You can't spend 40-60 hours a week long-term on SEO even if it is crucial to getting the most growth and the most bang for your buck.

Those hours are even assuming you know what you're doing and don't need to spend time learning, learning where the newest updates come out, and that you somehow avoid all penalties that litter SEO like landmines.

What's This All Mean To You?

When you first say “I need to learn how to get my website on Google,” that's the first step to getting things done, but SEO isn't just something to dabble in. It's a white collar version of a highly specialized field. You wouldn't do your own electrical work: you'd hire the electrician so you didn't get a shock and burn down your house.

You need a high level SEO specialist to help your site today and get you the traffic your business deserves!

For more information please watch our informative video that outlines the top five reasons why your business can benefit from hiring a Search Engine Optimization Professional.