How do you get more traffic from Google? Did you know 93% of online experiences start with a search engine? 81% of people perform online research before making a large purchase. Search engines drive 300% more traffic to websites than social media.

And organic search results drive 51%, whereas social drives only 5% of traffic. Most people use Google as their search engine. Google receives more than 63% of searches compared to Bing, Yahoo, and other websites. Let’s discuss how to get more traffic from Google.

Google learns every time a user searches via Google Search. It wants to give each searcher answers to their questions as soon as possible.

Is your website helping Google help its search engine users?

If so, Google will reward you with more traffic. Your website is a living, breathing entity. Every update you make to your website helps Google understand how visitors interact with it.

What do you need to do to get more traffic from Google?

Here are 10 things you should do to ensure Google loves you. These will also help you get more traffic from Google.

1. Make your website load faster

Studies show that 25% of visitors leave a page that takes more than 4 seconds to load. Bounce rates increase by 50% when your website takes 2 extra seconds to load. Conversions fall by 12% for every extra second it takes for your website to load.

How do you make your website faster? Start by understanding how Google sees your website by using Google’s free tool called Google PageSpeed Insights:

Google Page Speed is a tool that helps ensure your website is fast across all devices. It works on desktops, smartphones, and tablets.

Just enter your website URL and Google will analyze it. You will get action items for desktop and mobile versions of your websites.

It will give you recommendations for possible optimizations and those you have already made. It will provide you with a score and rating for mobile and desktop.

Once you see your score, you can see what categories you need to improve. You know where to concentrate once you get a baseline of where you stand.

Learn how to achieve a 100 out of 100.

Pro tip: Beyond Google, you can use free tools, such as GTmetrix and Dareboost.

How to optimize your website images

Optimizing your images can improve your website’s speed and help you attract more traffic from Google.

Here are some steps to take to do that.

Find your free images.

Use some of the best image websites for free high-quality photos that utilize the creative commons zero (CC0) license, which indicates ownership rights have been waived so no attributions are needed.

Crop and resize your images

Use free editing software like Pixlr X to help you re-size and crop images via your web browser.

You won’t have to purchase a license to Adobe Photoshop. You can use an online image editor instead. With it, you can apply a quick fix to the image. Add creative effects and borders as well.

Compress your images

Free image compression tools like TinyPNG can reduce file size without compromising image quality. Once you compress them, you can upload them to your web content management system.

Other steps you can take using browser caching and minify resources such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Google says page speed is a factor in its search page ranking algorithm,. This makes it a good place to start to get more traffic from Google.

2. Make your website mobile-friendly so it looks good on any device

We now spend 70% of our time online on our phones. More searches are done every day on mobile devices than on desktops.

94% of all mobile and tablet search traffic comes from Google.

People who own a smartphone use a search engine at least once a day. Additionally, 40% of mobile visitors will leave your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

More people are accessing the Internet on their mobile devices. Therefore, designing your website for mobile is critical. This ensures a top-rate user experience.

Don’t make the navigation or elements you need to touch small or too close together. Companies are moving toward responsive website design to optimize the mobile experience.

What is responsive website design?

A responsive website allows your website to adapt to the size of any screen. It can be viewed on any device.

In other words, visitors to your website won’t notice much difference. This is true whether they view it on a mobile device screen or a desktop.

Why use responsive website design?

Before responsive websites, companies had to create two versions of their websites: one for mobile and one for desktop.

Many companies still do this today. However, it is a time-consuming process. It requires extensive maintenance. Consistency between the two versions is also necessary.

With a responsive website, your site can be ready for all devices. This helps you lower the costs of maintaining a website. It also provides a seamless user experience.

Furthermore, it improves your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts (Google recommends it).

If you create a responsive website and avoid the most common mistakes webmasters make when designing for mobile,

Pro tip: Google will love your website if it is designed for mobile. You will use it to your competitive advantage.

3. Make your website secure

Google has said that SSL is now a ranking factor in their search algorithm.

What does this mean? If your website is not SSL-enabled, another website that has SSL may outrank you. This will dilute your visitors’ trust and garner unwanted attention.

What is SSL?

SSL stands for secure sockets layer. It is a technology that ensures all data stays private. This includes passwords, credit card information, and other personal data that pass between a web server and a web browser. It also protects against hackers.

How do you know if your website has SSL?

If you look at your website’s URL, does it contain “https://” with that added “s”? Or does it include just “http://” without an “s”? Websites who are SSL-enabled contain that extra “s” to the “http.”

A helpful tool is HubSpot’s SSL Checker. It can tell you whether you are secure without visiting a website.

If you use Google Chrome, you will be able to see if the website is secure or not.

After entering a website URL into the browser, you’ll see the red “Not Secure” warning. This warning appears next to websites that aren’t SSL-secured. You’ll see “Secure” in green for secure websites with SSL.

How do secure your website with SSL?

One of the first steps is to determine which certificate(s) you need for your website(s). You should also decide how many certificates you need.

For example, you may host content on multiple platforms or on different domains or subdomains.

Why should you move to HTTPS? 

Google has identified three main reasons to switch. One reason is that data sent using HTTPS is secured via a Transport Layer Security protocol (TLS). This protocol provides encryption, data integrity, and authentication.

• Encryption protects your users’ data from eavesdroppers. While the user is browsing your website, no one can see their activities on the webpage. No one can steal their information.
• Data integrity is where data can’t be modified or corrupted during transfer
• Authentication proves that your users communicate with your website, not another one. It protects against man-in-the-middle attacks. This improves trust with your visitors.

Does HTTPS mean your website is secure? 

No, HTTPS doesn’t protect your website from an attack. It still may be vulnerable to downgrade attacks, SSL/TLS vulnerabilities, Heatbleed, Poodle, and Logjam.

It can also be susceptible to website, server, or network hacks, as well as to software vulnerabilities. Brute force attacks and distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks are also threats.

What are some problems with migrating to HTTPS? 

Some things that could go wrong include preventing Google from crawling the site’s HTTP version. It might also prevent site crawls in general.

There could be content duplication issues, with both HTTPS and HTTP versions of the pages showing. Different versions of the page may show on HTTP and HTTPS.

Pro tip: Implementing HTTPS or SSL is not a simple process. However, if you do so, Google will love you. Your visitors will too.

4. Make sure you add fresh, high-quality and long pieces of content

Google loves frequent updates.

Simply put, if you update your website regularly with high-quality, fresh content, search engines will love you for it. Research shows that publishing new content will bring in more traffic.

Your freshness score

A web page can be given a fresh score based on when it was published. This also depends on when a Googlebot first becomes aware of the content. The score will decay over time.

The freshness score boosts content in search results but then declines as the content ages.

Your website earns a higher freshness score when it adds more content frequently. This score can be higher than that of websites that don’t add content frequently.

You can achieve higher rankings when search engines look at your site more frequently. And when you publish new content, you have more opportunities to use keywords.

Remember to update old content.

The goal of adding fresh content should not be to update just to update. It should benefit your website’s visitors.

This way, you increase your engagement, how long they stay on your website, and how many pages they visit. Updating older content can help you earn fresh links to your content.

Pro tip: Learn how to choose which content to update.

More content = more keywords

If you add more content frequently, you will optimize it with relevant keywords. Publishing or updating blog articles can also attract new visitors to your site.

Using keyword research tools helps you understand which words your audience cares about. You will understand how they search for things and see how they group keywords.

Fresh content increases your authority.

To become an “authority” website, you need to earn Google and the internet’s trust through your content.

One way to assess your website’s performance is to check your domain authority. It is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz.

This tool helps predicts how well your website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). on a scale from 1 to 100 with higher scores equaling a great ability to rank higher.

This score can help you compare your website with other websites over time.

To figure out your score, enter your website URL into Moz’s Open Site Explorer:

Remember, the more informative, valuable content you publish, the greater authority potential your website enjoys.

Add more value by producing longer content.

The more value your content provides, the better the change it will rank higher in the search engines.

To add more value, you write longer pieces of content. By doing this, you are more likely to answer the questions of your clients and prospects. This approach also covers related questions.

And you are more likely to get more social media shares. You will get more backlinks. They will convert to your call to action (example: subscribe to your email newsletter).

Your content should be more than 3,000 words. ‎Marketing consultant and speaker Neil Patel writes blog articles that are more than 4,000 words. He averages 100,000 visitors a month on neilpatel.com.

Buzzsumo and OkDork researched the social share counts of more than 100 million articles.

In other words, the longer the blog articles, the more social media shares it gets.

Specifically, the sweet spot for the most social shares was 3,000 to 10,000 words.

Longer blog articles also increase conversion rates. CrazyEgg increased conversion rates 363% by switching to a long-form page.

Longer content also increases the number of backlinks, according to Moz’s research.

In summary, you should add fresh, high-quality content to your website. Make sure the content is substantial, and don’t forget to update your old content.

5. Answers questions with your content

To quickly answer questions about your content, do what Marcus Sheridan did.

He is one of the earlier adopters of content marketing. He is known for his revolutionary marketing strategy of answering his customers’ questions.

Pro tip: Google has one goal and one goal only: give people the best search results possible.

How do you find out what questions your clients and prospects are asking?

Type into Google potential questions you think your audience may be asking. Then go to the bottom of the search results. Look at the “searches related” section at the bottom of the SERP.

For example, look at the related searches for “cloud vs. colocation.”

You can see the other questions related to “cloud vs. colocation.” You will be ranked higher if your content also answers related questions.

Another way to answer questions with your content is to work with your sales team. You can use your social selling efforts to see which questions your sales team is being asked.

Have you created content to answer those questions your sales team is getting? You can also use websites like Quora to research the questions being asked.

Pro tip: The quicker you answer the questions your clients have, the better Google and your audience will like you. Answering promptly ensures satisfaction and engagement.

Google users want their answers now, and they don’t want to work hard. They also want you to answer any additional questions that may arise after their initial question.

6. Add videos and visuals

Utilizing video marketing results in a 4.8% higher conversion rate than on websites that don’t use video.

Videos encourage visitors to spend more time on a site and allow them to retain more information, too.

A well-optimized video has a significantly higher chance of reaching the first page of Google. It can be up to 52 times more likely compared to a text article.

Rich or interactive content drives more engagement. In addition to adding videos to your content, include images as well.

Content gets 94% more views with images.

And people remember images better. If a relevant image is paired with the same information, people retain 65% of the information three days later.

There are websites with beautiful, free images that can make your content stand out and be more memorable.

These free image websites utilize the creative commons zero (CC0) license. This indicates that ownership rights have been waived. Therefore, no attributions are needed.

Pro tip: Google loves visuals and videos just as much as text. Make sure you include all three with your content.

7. Build and submit your sitemap to Google

A sitemap is a list of pages on your website that users can visit. An eXtensible Markup Language (XML) sitemap helps your website tell search engines which web pages have been created. This helps search engines crawl your website more effectively.

A sitemap is very important for search engine optimization (SEO). Use Google Search Console to submit your sitemap to Google.

Google Search Console provides you with a collection of tools and resources such as which pages on your websites are the most popular, and you can find and fix website errors

Pro tip: Learn how to build and submit a sitemap and create a robots.txt file.

8. No bad links

Does anyone like getting a 404 page when they hope to read helpful information? Broken links negatively impact usability. Search engines view numerous broken links as a sign of site neglect. This perception negatively impacts SEO ranking.

The good news is that you don’t have to go through every page. It’s unnecessary to manually test the links on your website. If you prefer, you can utilize apps and tools to help check for broken links.

You should fix the bad links in your content using tools like Dead Link Checker.

This tool will help you improve your user experience, increase your website traffic and increase conversions.

9. Make sure you are localized

People depend on the internet to find information about products and services. This is especially true for those who are local to them.

In fact, 72% of consumers who perform a local search visit a store within 5 miles of their current location. Google “near me” searches have increased twofold over the past year. Additionally, 86% of people use Google Maps to look up a business’s location.

Google understands the power of ensuring its search results are localized to the searcher’s location.

They now ignore country domain and delivers search results on detected location. Google has added a strap at the bottom of its search page to denote which country has been detected.

One of the ways you can optimize for local is Google My Business.

It is a free service Google provides that boosts your search visibility and shows up in local search results. It also ensures that Google has the correct information about your business and your different office or retail locations.

Also, if you want to use digital or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising through Google AdWords, you need Google My Business. It is critical for setting up locations extensions in Google AdWords.

Location extensions in Google AdWords show your address. They provide a map to your location. They also provide the distance to your local business.

Pro tip: Learn why Google My Business is so important for local SEO. Optimize your Google My Business listings. Discover how these five local search tactics can help you beat your competition.

10. Be consistent over time

Are you publishing content on a predictable and consistent basis? It is like appointment television (TV) viewing for your favorite TV show.

You know it will be on a particular day and time. Are you doing that with your content? Are you publishing content on a specific day and time?

Too many marketers create and publish content. They hit “publish” when they feel like it, not when the content is ready. They need to understand the 6 key elements of audience growth.

Your audience should not be those who consume your current piece of content. Instead, focus on the number of people you can count on to consume your next content.

An editorial calendar is one way to stay consistent with your content and grow your audience. It will help keep your content creators and content organized.

It will help you balance your blog with various topics and formats. You will make sure your content is developed on time and on budget. An editorial calendar holds everyone on your team accountable and becomes a database of ideas.

Pro tip: If you stick to your editorial calendar, you’ll always have content to engage your audience. You’ll also get more traffic from Google.

How to get more traffic from Google

If you do these 10 things mentioned above, Google will love you and reward you with more website traffic.

Remember, your website is a living and breathing thing. Every update you make to it helps Google understand how visitors interact with your website.

What tips would you add to this list to make sure that Google loves you? How do you get more traffic from Google? What are your tips?

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