In the digital age, a good website is vital for any business. Many companies spend a lot of resources on developing and building a website that reflects the brand, has sharp design and graphics and is an outstanding representation of your business.
Now, this is only half the battle because the best-looking website will not reap many benefits if nobody can find it. The biggest name in the game of getting noticed is still Google, and it has a pretty complex algorithm that determines who will be seen and who will not. If you’re like most people, you search for something and most likely click on a link on the first page of the search results. That’s where you want to be; it is like the Holy Grail of visibility.
So, if you’ve been wondering how to make your website visible on Google search, this blog will tell you more about how to increase your website visibility on Google.
Importance of website visibility on Google
While there are many search engines out there, Google, at least for the time being, is the king of the hill and having your website noticed by it is paramount. Getting your brand to prospective clients is more important than ever, and with your competitors attempting to do the same, the importance of website visibility cannot be overstated.
Benefits of increasing website visibility
Increasing your website’s visibility comes with many benefits, brand awareness, increased traffic and leads, and more sales and revenue. So, with that being said, let’s see how you can improve your website visibility on Google.
What is Website Visibility?
Let’s first define what “website visibility” is in the first place. When you go to Google (or Bing, Yahoo etc.), you will see many websites listed in the search results. Website visibility is, simplified, your spot in those rankings. And the higher you rank, the better the visibility of your website.
How to get your website noticed by Google
There are many ways to increase your website’s visibility on Google, and they actually have nothing to do with your site’s appearance. The magic happens behind the scenes and in your content, such as keywords in your written content, optimized speed, structure, meta descriptions, and more. And when we say magic, we mean the hard and dedicated work of professionals that keep up to date with all the latest changes to the algorithms and best practices.
13 Ways to Increase Website Visibility on Google in 2023
1. Design a Website that is Mobile Friendly and Optimized for Speed
Over half the internet traffic these days comes from mobile devices, making it critical to have a responsive, mobile-friendly website to attract these customers that surf the internet for information on the go. Google also has adopted a ranking algorithm that indexes mobile-first websites higher in the search results, making it even more crucial to ensure mobile-friendliness.
Another factor Google values highly is page speed. So, ensure your website is mobile-friendly and optimized for speed, and you have taken a big step forward.
2. Keyword Research and focus on target keywords in your niche
Keyword research is one of the main focuses of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Basically, it examines which keywords have the highest search volumes in your specific niche, considering which keywords your competitors rank for as well. The list of keywords established by this research will give you a jumping-off point to create content that will attract this much-coveted organic search traffic and increase your website’s visibility. There are many tools these days, such as Semrush or Ahrefs, which you can use to research what people are looking for on the internet.
The approach varies, however, depending on if your website is already established or brand new.
If a website is new, focus on the long-tail keyword
If a website is new to the web, you should focus on so-called “long tail keywords.” Basically, this refers to phrases of three to five words instead of just a specific keyword. These long-tail keywords are more efficient on new websites because they are more specific and targeted, giving your website a chance to rank higher amid the established websites that already have some authority within your niche.
They also reflect how some customers search for information, often seeking answers to specific questions.
If a website already has some authority, go for short-tail, high-volume keywords
On the other hand, if your website is already established on the internet and gathered some authority and good standing, you can target short-tail, high-volume keywords to drive traffic to your website. However, this is a significantly more competitive market and comparatively more difficult to rank for as the competition is considerably more significant.
3. Integrate Website with Google Analytics & Google Search Console
Google Search Console and Google Analytics are two excellent tools to help you rise through the ranks. Integrating your website with these two tools allows you to research parameters such as queries, user behaviour, bounce rate, keywords, demographics and more.
They also give excellent insight into other metrics, such as goal completions, for landing pages, devices and countries, allowing you to get a deep analysis of your website’s and its pages’ performance that you can use to optimize your site.
Submitting a sitemap to Google is an excellent way to allow for Google’s crawler (the program it uses to index website content to process and rank for the search result listings) to quickly and efficiently index your website’s pages. While it can do this independently, a sitemap will tell Google which pages and posts you believe to be the most important and give it valuable information.
Oh, what is a sitemap, you ask? It’s a file that contains information about the pages and posts on your website and how they are connected.
How to check your sitemap
There are many different ways to check your sitemap. Here are the easiest ones:
You can manually check common CML sitemaps locations and names. In most cases, the sitemap is located in the root directory of your website, although sometimes there might also be a dedicated folder named /sitemap/. One of the most common ones is www.urlofyourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml or www.urlofyourwebsite.com/sitemap_index.xml. There are other formats, such as RSS or Atom; you might find your sitemap at /RSS/, /rss.xml or /atom.xml.
Check the robots.txt file. Another common place to look is the robots.txt file, a text file that SEOs and programmers use to provide information to search engine crawlers. And often, part of this information is a link to your sitemap.
Look in the Google Search Console. As mentioned earlier, Google Search Console is an indispensable tool in your quest for website visibility, and it even offers you a menu point in the navigation called “Sitemaps.”
How to submit a sitemap to Google
To submit a sitemap to Google, you have to do the following steps:
Open Google Search Control and log in with your Gmail account.
Click “Index” in the navigation to the left and select “Sitemaps.”
Under “Add a new sitemap,” enter your URL+sitemap.xml.
Click submit, and you will find your sitemap under “Submitted Sitemaps.”
5. Implementing Local SEO Strategies
Many people don’t know that there is more than one SEO, global and local.
Optimizing for local search intent
Where global SEO targets the general audience interested in a service or product, local SEO optimizes your content for local search intent. Local SEO explicitly targets your local areas by adding the name of a province, town or neighbourhood to the keyword. So when people in your area search for, just as an example, “window replacement in Oshawa,” your business will appear in the search results thanks to local SEO.
Creating and optimizing Google My Business listing
Google My Business is your business profile on Google. While searching for something, we’re sure you’ve seen the map with some business names and links right underneath. This is where your business will appear with all relevant information, links and reviews. Optimizing this listing will allow you to rank high in these localized searches.
Encouraging customer reviews and testimonials
As just mentioned, your business reviews will also appear in these search results, so encourage your customers to leave reviews and testimonials. The number of reviews and their score factor into Google’s algorithm and can rank your website higher.
Local citations and directory listings
Another ranking factor for local SEO is citations. Citations mention your business’s name, address, and phone number on a website that isn’t yours. Having your business listed in trusted online directories also serves the same purpose, to let Google know that your business is real and, depending on the relevance of directories, can improve your position on the search engine result page (SERP)
6. Create High-quality content that satisfies user intent
As we had mentioned at the beginning, the right keywords are essential, but high-quality content is critical for your website in more ways than one. Not only will visitors to your website value good, relevant content and increase their trust in your expertise, but Google also considers quality when ranking your website. The algorithm measures how long visitors stay on your site and whether they leave your website immediately or explore other pages.
Create a content calendar and publish content regularly
Content marketing is one strategy to regularly create valuable and relevant content for your website that will engage and convert visitors into customers over time. So creating a good strategy is critical, and a content calendar is a great tool to help you with this.
Publishing content regularly is an excellent way to have potential customers return to your website regularly, not only helping you convert them into customers but also driving more regular traffic to your website and increasing its relevance for Google.
The core principles of high-quality content creation are:
Dive deep into relevant topics and address the most common questions associated with the strongest keywords your keyword research has found.
Include different media, such as images, videos or audio, to add value and increase the time the user spends on your page.
Try to give the user an experience rather than just simple answers.
Monitor your website’s load time and optimize the site for mobile users.
Get backlinks from other trusted Google sources.
Why Content Velocity Matters in SEO
While the saying that quality goes over quantity indeed rings true, content velocity is another of the many levers you can pull for SEO. If you ensure that the quality of your content is consistently high, the quantity factor also comes into play.
Search engines index your website by sending a program called a crawler through the pages of your site, indexing and evaluating it as it goes. The more content you have on your site, the more these crawlers can engage with and boost your rankings.
To determine the proper velocity, a lot depends on your competition. Look at your main three competitors and see how often they post new content. If they post 5, 12 and 18 times a month, you should post at least 18 times per month to have a healthy velocity.
7. On-page optimization is the key
As mentioned before, a lot of your website’s visibility depends on things other than content. Google puts a high emphasis on an optimized website.
Title tags and meta descriptions for SERP
One crucial factor is the Click Through Rate (CTR), which tracks how often people click on a specific link. Optimizing the title tags and meta descriptions can make your page rank higher on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and increase the CTR, enticing users to click on the link in the search engine results.
The title tag is the title of your page and should be the answer to one of the most common questions, such as a “How to…” or a focus keyword like “window replacement.” Users also like “X Ways to…” headlines that compel them to click the link and find out. The meta description is the little snippet underneath the title tag on the search engine results page and should entice the user to click on the link.
Header tags and keyword usage
Header tags are headlines of decreasing importance (from <H1> to <H6>) that help structure the text and improve readability while also increasing the SEO of your website. These headings will also help the Google crawler gauge the importance of the text, using it in the search results.
The same goes for keywords that users are searching for. The crawler will also index and use these to rank your page higher on the search engine results page.
Optimizing URL structure
The URL, or Uniform Resource Locator, is the website address we type into a browser, so in our case, www.btmarketing.ca. What makes the structure so important is that Google uses the structure to index your website and determine how the pages are interlinked and connected. So a logical and clear format is critical instead of having random number and letter combinations or words that don’t clearly indicate what the page someone is about to visit is about.
Another side effect of a clear URL structure is the user experience. Someone searching for a particular topic or keyword is likelier to click on a link that ends with /recipes/vegetable-soup than one with /index.php.id_bpr=163&rec66jju.
Optimizing images
One search type many businesses don’t think about is Google Images. If your products or services can be captured in high-quality focus, they can be used to your advantage; just make sure they’re optimized. And it’s not hard to do so:
Choose a descriptive file name (so avoid a DSCN220412.jpg)
Resize the picture to the right size for your page (Some plug-ins can resize images on the fly, but remember that your browser will still load the full-size picture, slowing your page down considerably.)
Add captions
Use alt and title text (Some people disable images to save on bandwidth or loading speed, so a good alt text will still tell them what the image is about.)
Include images in your XML sitemaps.
8. Building High-Quality Backlinks
Backlinks are another factor in SEO that is often overlooked. Backlinks are links from other websites that link back to yours. The Google algorithm views these links as votes of confidence in your site. Now, not all links are created equal, though, as Google will also consider where the backlink comes from. This means it will count a link more if it comes from a respected, authoritative website.
Like if you have a business that deals with food, you’d rather trust a link to your website that comes from a renowned chef than some obscure blog that is all over the place. Well, Google agrees with you.
Schema is a structured data vocabulary that helps search engines better understand the information on your website. Implementing schema markup into your site can give additional information and structure to your content.
For example, someone looking to purchase a bike will see additional information on the search engine results page, including price, size, ratings, and reviews or may contain more details. Often, these further details can decide if a potential customer will click on the link to your website.
10. Make it easy for Google to crawl your pages
As Google crawls your website constantly, it’s helpful to give their crawler a little help when indexing your website and learning what it needs. You can make it easier and quicker for Google to retrieve all the necessary information by:
Inserting keywords related to your targeted topic in the meta title, URL, meta description, and image tags of your pages.
Internally linking your website’s pages so that your website as a whole is easier to crawl (and more authoritative).
Running a technical SEO audit of your site to ensure there are no indexation holes.
11. Leveraging Social Media for Visibility
When looking at how to increase online visibility, social media is one of the most powerful promotional tools in your arsenal. While Google says that social media marketing does not directly influence your website’s ranking, a robust social media presence can, however, help your website get noticed by a wider audience and, in turn, lead to more traffic and visibility.
It is very efficient to get updates to your followers and initiate engagement with prospective customers, as they will be able to see that you are active and raise brand awareness.
So, if you’ve been wondering how to increase visibility on social media, an active presence on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram may not directly influence your website’s visibility on Google but can complement your Google SEO efforts.
12. Strategic Internal Linking with Proper Anchor Text
We had talked about backlinks and how they can tell Google’s algorithm that your site is important earlier, but this doesn’t just involve links from other websites. Interlinking relevant pages of your website can serve several purposes. For one, it allows the visitor to quickly navigate your website to relevant or related services or products; for the other, it helps Google create connections between content and determine which pages are essential.
What is essential in this is to use proper anchor text. Anchor text is the text that will appear on the hyperlink. For example, in this blog, the phrase “best SEO company in Toronto” is the anchor text for a link leading to a blog on how to choose the, well, best SEO company in Toronto.
A descriptive anchor text will help Google understand your website’s structure and give your visitor an idea of what the link you are trying to send them to is about.
13. Conduct Scheduled SEO audits and fix errors
Schedule regular SEO audits to gain essential information about your website. The algorithms of Google (and other websites) constantly change, so a strategy that worked well in the past might not be as efficient after such a change. So checking your website regularly is an excellent way to ensure you’re still on the right path.
There are several free and premium tools available that you can use to perform SEO audits, such as Ahref or Semrush. These can provide valuable information on broken links, duplicate content, redirection problems, and more. It will also help you to identify other areas that you should improve to help your website to rank higher in Google.
There are several different ways to increase your website’s visibility on Google. Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly and optimized for speed. Research keywords and organically use them on your website to attract the attention of potential customers. Optimize your website itself to help Google’s crawlers.
How do I get my website on Google Maps?
Go to maps.google.com and type in your business address in the search box. When you select the sprocket in the lower right corner, you can choose “Share or embed map.” Copy this link and add a link to the map location on your website where your address displays.
How important is content creation for improving website visibility on Google?
When looking at how to increase the online visibility of a company, content creation is crucial in improving your website’s visibility on Google. By researching the strongest keywords and emphasizing high-quality content, you can rank higher in the Google algorithm and add value for potential customers and boost your site’s reputation.
Are there any tools or resources to help me increase my website’s visibility on Google?
You can use tools like Ahref and Semrush to identify areas that require improvements, but it is still hard work to ensure that everything is done right. If you check the above list, we have compiled a comprehensive list of things you can do to help you increase your website’s visibility on Google.
What are the common mistakes to avoid when trying to improve website visibility on Google?
Some of the main mistakes you can make when trying to improve website visibility on Google are:
Not using relevant keywords
Not ensuring your website is mobile-friendly
Having a slow website
Poor quality content
No on-page optimization
How to get your website on Google’s first page?
Identify the most relevant and searched keywords for your business and use them in quality and unique content. Optimize your website to be mobile-friendly and fast with the proper title tags, meta descriptions, and structure. Ensure images are optimized, and update and maintain your Google listing regularly.
How does SEO increase website visibility?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and most people will find your website through a web search on Google (or other search engines). SEO is a proven strategy to take steps toward your website appearing higher in search engine results.
How do I get Google to index my website?
Basically, Google has to be able to find your website and pages to index them. To help the Google crawler, submit a sitemap in the Google Search Console.
Supercharge Your Business
Get a Free Consultation
More Blogs
10 Common SEO Myths That Can Jeopardize Rankings
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial to your business’s online visibility. It is the science and art of increasing a
