As a website owner, do you ever search for your website online? Well, what happens when you realize that it’s not in the top three results? You look down more, and it’s not the fourth, nor the fifth. The first search results page is over, and your website isn’t even there.
What happens then? A bout of depression, that’s what. It sucks to have your website unrecognized by search engines because it means that the only visits you get are probably from your mom and your best friend. Thankfully, there’s an easy solution to all of this: get on good terms with Google.
IMAGE: PEXELS
Why Google Specifically?
First off, we’ve got to explain why are we going to be focusing on Google. To put it simply, it is the most popular search engine on the planet. While 73% of online searches in the past year were powered by Google, the remaining percentage of searches was powered by all the other search engines out there combined, that’s according to net market share.
Imagine yourself as an actor. Would you stage a fake audition to try and impress Steven Spielberg? Or would you go through all the effort to impress a random sound technician? With all due respect to sound technicians and their critical roles in film making, if you were to try and impress someone, logically, it should be someone who can get you places.
Catering to Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo’s search criteria are fine and all, but wouldn’t it be a lot more practical to provide to the requirements wanted by the biggest, most popular and most trusted search engines? So, now that we’re on the same page – no pun intended – how important is it to get good with Mr./Ms. Google?
Where Do You Think Visitors Come From?
Visitors don’t grow on trees, and you can’t generate traffic just by being a good website; that’s not how the world works. What happens is that people go to a search engine; like Google, and search for their desired topic. After that, they click on a website out of the many that show up on a search result page. That is the most common way any website gets its visitors.
While slightly convincing, this isn’t a reason to explain why should you try your best to get on good terms with Google, right? Well, here’s the follow-up point. Any search engine is in full control over which page ranks first, second, third, and which don’t even make it to the first page.
Early Bird Gets The Clicks
Now, we don’t need to explain how short of an attention span most people have. Think about it. We are the species that is willing to upgrade to Spotify premium, buy Netflix, and flip the channel during commercial breaks to avoid dealing with advertisements.
Do you still think anyone would know about your website’s existence if it lies on the second or third page of search engine results? You could hide a body there, for Chuck’s sake. On the contrary, high ranking pages seem to get all the attention from visitors, which is any web page owner’s ultimate goal, right?
As this post explains, “websites on the first page of Google get, on average, 85% of the traffic for any given search term.” Then, it goes on to elaborate, “with the click-through rate for the first search result being an average 34%.”
This only goes to show that the higher you rank, the more likely you are to get people to click on your website rather than other pages. See, most web users look for the fastest and most direct results, and they know that search engines conveniently place these on top. So, for them, any more scrolling down is just pointless.
Have You Heard Of Online Marketing?
At this point, you probably have an idea what search engine optimization, SEO, is. In case you don’t, though, it’s the process of making your website more attractive to a search engine. When the popular search engine that is Google arranges results, it does so using specific criteria; relevance of the domain name to the search keywords, website speed and reliability, relevance of web content, popularity and several other factors.
What’s more, Google also takes into consideration how many clicks does your website often get. So, if it is a frequently visited website, it would automatically get bumped up the results page. Having said that, get ready to scoop the leftovers of your mind off the floor because we’re about to blow it to bits.
Most web users already know most of this information. Even if they don’t know the exact technical processes, they already associate a higher ranking by popularity. To them, it’s literally as if Google is saying, “here you go, buddy. That’s the best place where you can purchase a giraffe online. Then, you’ve got a couple of other websites that are not as great. You know what? Just skip them. Go with number one. Have a nice day.”
In other words, people consider websites that are on top more well-known, trusted, relevant, and overall better than their peers. If Google finds your website good enough, it’ll automatically be associated with all the good qualities we’ve mentioned. How is that not good for business? It’s such a cheap and effortless form of marketing and image building.
If piece together everything we’ve said throughout the article, you’ll realize that optimizing your website to match what Google is constantly looking for is a lot more vital than what you think. Its benefits surpass building a good image, generating more web traffic or spreading your website’s name around.
However, good search engines often change their criteria according to what their users want or need. You need to be aware of these changes and adapt to any sudden changes that a search engine throws at you. After all, wouldn’t be awful if you realize that all the time spent on streamlining your content had gone down the drain?
If you are interested in even more technology-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels, then we have a lot to choose from.
COMMENTS