Google SEO Not Working? Here's How to Improve It

Vũ Khôi

Author at Wotech Electronics Blog

SEO is no longer an unfamiliar term in today's digital age, especially with the growth of the field as we see it now. It is the decisive factor in your website's ranking on Google's search bar. So how to improve your Google SEO is the question businesses ask most often, because raising brand awareness and increasing revenue are their main purpose and top concern.

How does Google SEO work?

Search engines like Google always have their own criteria for evaluating and ranking websites, placing your pages at the top positions of search results. Put as simply as possible, the two key factors Google relies on to decide your website's ranking are the web interface design and the quality of the content you publish. If you want a website that meets SEO standards, don't hesitate to contact Markdao. With more than 5 years of experience in SEO, we are committed to delivering a professional, modern website that is especially Google-friendly.

So how the website is designed and how the content is published are the two most important factors. But what exactly do we need to do? Let's keep exploring in the sections below:

Improve your Google SEO to increase traffic to your website

First of all, we want to emphasize: if you intend to own a website that ranks well on search engines, or one that meets SEO standards, the first step is to choose a quality agency — take a look at our recommendations.

SEO is straightforward work: it's not enough just to have a beautiful, fast-loading website. Remember that the purpose of building a website is to promote your company's image to Internet users, to sell, and to increase revenue. The key point is that to achieve all this, you need to increase traffic to your website — and there is no more effective, sustainable way than appearing in the top positions of search results. Sounds difficult, right? But read on.

How to improve Google SEO through web design?

Here's what SEO on a website involves. Markdao will cover elements such as the URLs of the pages within your website, meta-description tags, headings and images, page load speed, Netlinking issues, and finally — have you ever heard of the term responsive website?

Start with the URLs

In SEO especially, the URL plays an extremely important role, because it is the website's "house number" for Internet users and, more importantly, for Google's robots. These robots, also known as crawlers, crawl to your website to read and index it — only then can your website appear on search results pages.

The principles for creating a URL that is standard for Google SEO are:

The URL should not contain special characters or numbers (0, 1...): Google's crawlers get confused and find it hard to interpret numbers and special characters such as %$*#@, which affects your website's ability to rank highly.

The URL should not contain diacritics: for languages with diacritics such as Vietnamese or French, URLs must not carry them, because robots classify these marks in the same category as special characters.

A good URL should not be too long — not only in terms of long keywords, but also in not having too many slugs. For example, www.markdao.com/fr/service/webdesign is less optimal than www.markdao.com/service/webdesign. Moreover, Google's robots no longer favor URLs with long keywords. An optimal URL is about 90 characters for Webmaster Tools and 76 characters for Google blogs.

Then the meta-descriptions

The next important element is the meta-description. To optimize your meta-descriptions to standard, first of all these tags must contain the page's keyword and a concise, accurate summary of the page or website.

The meta description appears on search results pages and holds the summary of a given page or website. That means when an Internet user searches on Google and receives a list of results, the first things that catch the user's eye are the title tags and, even more importantly, the meta-descriptions. If the content there is clearly presented, contains the keyword, and answers the user's search intent, the chances of your website or page being visited are very high.

Choosing suitable headings (titles) and images

Headings here mean the H1, H2, H3… tags — the first elements Google's robots read when they enter your pages. You therefore need to master the requirements for optimizing Hn tags, such as the number of characters in each H tag. Since Google's algorithms are constantly changing, you need to update these metrics regularly — and don't forget to insert the main keyword into every heading.

As for images, they need to be good quality and on topic. Also remember that images uploaded to a website always have an ALT field, also called alternative text — this is what Google reads to understand what your image illustrates, so it can index that image in the image search section.

Website loading speed

Your page load speed is directly proportional to how highly Google rates you. To achieve this, the website builder needs to know how to optimize the code being used and limit, as much as possible, the components on the site — especially images. Design or choose images of a suitable size, because image size is the key factor determining page load speed.

Netlinking matters

Internal links and external links are the main basis on which search engines assess the logical relevance of your content. This criterion is considered one of the most important factors when improving your SEO.

Internal links are links that take the reader to other pages within the same website — such as a services page or a product introduction.

External links come in two forms: first, from one website you insert links pointing to other websites; second, known as backlinks, you go to other websites, forums, or blogs and insert links to your own website.

In practice, the quality and relevance of these links allow Google to assess your website's popularity and determine whether your content is optimized and meets Internet users' needs. Internal linking, external linking, and backlink building are excellent methods for improving your website's SEO.

Design a web that's friendly to every screen

The final element — one that is increasingly indispensable now that users tend to browse the web on smartphones — is web design that is friendly to every screen type, such as tablet, desktop, smartphone, and more. Did you know Google has penalized many websites that open on desktop but not on mobile? If you're worried about whether your website is friendly to every screen, or how to make your website friendly, don't hesitate to let Markdao help you.

Improving Google SEO through your own content is not to be missed

Content-based SEO includes the following elements: keyword selection, paying more attention to long-tail keywords, tips for writing SEO-standard articles, and finally updating your website with new articles regularly.

Keyword selection

A website consists of many pages, and each page should cover a single information topic, serving the search needs of visitors, customers, or even your potential customers. Your task is therefore to choose one main keyword for each page and make sure these keywords have a high search potential. From the selected keywords, you build the content for each page — and don't forget to insert the keyword into the URL, the titles, and so on, as we mentioned above. This really "pleases" Google's crawlers.

Keyword research — in other words, helping you find the most searched keywords of the month in each country — can be done with tools such as Insight or Hubspot.

Long-tail keywords — why not?

Long-tail keywords address the content topic in more detail than short, generic ones, helping Internet users understand the issue immediately — and if they have a need, they will click right away. For example, the keyword "2018 toyota car price" will be extremely competitive, and even if you rank in the top positions, the traffic — though large — will not translate into revenue. So why not be more specific by lengthening that keyword to "2018 toyota vios price"? With this keyword phrase, you'll get less traffic, but that traffic will be higher quality, which increases your conversion rate.

Tips for a Google SEO-standard article

Once you have chosen your keywords, you can start writing content. Today, Markdao shares some tips for writing a standard article:

• 1 main keyword per piece of content (article or web page)

• A minimum of 300 words for a low-competition keyword, and up to 1,500 words for a highly competitive keyword

• Do not repeat a keyword too many times within the content, because Google doesn't like it

• Absolutely never copy – paste content from other sources, or you will be penalized by Google's algorithms.

Keep publishing new articles

The last tip is to keep updating your website with new articles. That content must relate to the field you operate in and to your products/services. In short, imagine the topics that would be enjoyed by and useful to Internet users, and write quality articles. In digital marketing, and SEO in particular, the more you strive to serve Internet users, the more highly Google and other search engines will rate you.

Looking ahead, what should we do to improve Google SEO for your website?

What else is coming? Google today is continuously introducing new improvements to create a civilized, modern Internet world — voice search being a prime example. In fact, you can see that today's operating systems have developed this area, specifically Siri on iOS or OK Google on Android. Searching and querying by voice works differently than on screen interfaces. With this pace of development, in the near future you should be thinking about and refining your website's optimization methods for voice search.

Markdao has shared tips for improving your SEO. We hope this article proves useful to anyone who wants to refresh the results their website delivers. We wish you success — and stay tuned for more interesting articles from Markdao!

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