What To Do When Your Webpage Doesn’t Rank

Having issues getting your webpage to rank up on the SEO search? Here are some tips and principles to incorporate to push up your rank.

Maximizing Relevancy

When searching up apples like the fruit you want to be sent to what you are searching for and not apple products made by Steve Jobs. What we have to do is understand search engine optimization and update our site to be read correctly in these 6 different things to be more relevant to what is being searched. Overall using keywords in these different areas will hold more relevance in searches improving your ranking.

  • URL- adding keywords and relevancy to Website URL or subcategory page address with words that are relevant to the search.
  • Title Tag – On top of the tab the title will have Company name and ” slogan or phrase” incorporating relevant keyword phrases will increase weight search.
  • Header Tag – Within the HTML you can edit headers and add labels to increase clues to the site but this can also let other sites borrow content as well.
  • Main Content- One thing about your main content is incorporating keywords into the main content when it makes sense keeping the usage to at least 3-5% of the overall word count to gain benefits. Anymore it would become ineffective and seen as keyword stuffing a black hat SEO tactic that is bad for business and easily countered by Search engines.
  • Image Alt Text and File Name – Since search engines aren’t able to recognize images editing alternative text and labeling the image with keywords can help drive additional traffic to the site.
  • Anchor Text – Search engine uses the anchor text from external links as an objective. So using this principle to link from one page to another within the same website would allow for more traffic and relevancy. So when doing this we should link pages with targeted keyword and phrases as the anchor text of that link.

Choosing Target Search Phrases

The first step is choosing a list of phrases rather than one to improve our search ranking. According to Larson &Drapper is targeting and focusing on phrases on these 4 factors:

  • (1) Relevance- Back to using keywords and phrases that are relevant to what the webpage is intended for and knowing the customer and consumer language in what they are searching for. For instance, running shoe Nike has secured and found the keywords to appear relatively high in the ranking given their amazing relevancy.
  • (2) Traffic- Using google Keyword Planner and other tools to help scope out popular keywords can be helpful in choosing a good keyword or phrase. The last thing we want is a phrase that no one searches cause that won’t help us rank up.
  • (3) Competition- Knowing the competition and doing some research on who and what is popping up can help select effective keywords and phrases. With giant companies like Amazon, overstock.com smaller companies have more success in longer phrases such as “gold Rolex watch” vs “watches.
  • (4) Current ranking- Looking at keywords and phrases and adjusting their ranking for the lower end words to bigger corporations. While the 1st one and 2nd phrase may be tied closely to the site of the giant company the other phrases or keywords may be performing less where the smaller business can capitalize and improve our ranking for that search.

Investigate the SERP

What does that look like? According to Moz.com with RAnd Dishkin is using google performing a search query in Google and analyze the data. Figure out what google believes to be relevant to the keywords searches. Observe what google will provide from the content given. We want to figure out intent, type of content required and missing pieces. We can learn and fill the opportunity for missing pieces of what is being asked and solving and giving an answer to that search taking lead in that ranking.

Crafting High-Quality Webpages

Imagine, building a webpage so amazing but in the early 2000’s well while it was great in the 2000s now 2019 and it equally as important to update and maintain your webpage as it is creating a high-quality one. One thing to recognize according to quicksproat.com is that dwell time- the amount of time a person is on your page can significantly improve ranking so making a great site and maintained so they return is something we should incorporate when crafting webpages.

Increase your Loading Speed!

Surprising or not having good loading speed is important. Search Engines such as Google has goals of providing users a good experience using their platform. So if we don’t uphold our end google pays and so do we. According to SEO.co ” If the pages on your website take longer than five seconds to load, this is considered substandard and unacceptable (by Google’s terms).” And this can explain why our pages aren’t ranking so well.

To Sum It Up…

It takes time and research to improve ranking, it won’t happen overnight and it’s not based on luck. There is a lot of effort and research that is done to improve webpage rankings. So best of luck and may the ranking ever be in your favor.

Citation

  • “Chapter 4 On Site SEO Section 2: Choosing Target Search Phrases.” Digital Marketing Essentials, by Jeff Larson and Stuart Draper, Publishing by Edify, 2018, edify.stukent.com/app/publication/d801ea3f-55b7-4374-ac5a-03d0e2cff93f/417149a8-ec84-467e-97c5-5e8291f3d39a/586b5976-dbb0-4d16-80a4-d843c572c648/086db10b-0d11-4191-8370-4be8332afacd/view.
  • Edwards, Sam. “Why Isn’t My Website Ranking?” SEO.co, 28 Sept. 2019, seo.co/why-isnt-my-website-ranking/.
  • Fishkin, Rand. “How to Rank: The SEO Checklist.” Moz, Moz, 31 July 2019, moz.com/blog/rank-in-2018-seo-checklist.
  • Jones, Kristopher. “4 Reasons Why Your Content Isn’t Ranking.” Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Journal, 26 Aug. 2019, www.searchenginejournal.com/why-content-isnt-ranking/317917/#close.
  • Quicksprout. “34 Ways To Improve SEO Rankings in 2019.” Quicksprout, 29 July 2019, www.quicksprout.com/ways-to-improve-seo-ranking/.

5 Ways to Increase Landing Page Conversions

Before starting there’s a couple of things we have to understand before we can improve landing page conversion. What is a Landing Page? A landing page is a web page you are sent to after you click on the link. For example, if you were to search something on google like Apple. And click on the top link the page that you are sent to from the link would be considered the landing page.

And what is a conversion? The “conversion” or “landing page conversion” is the target action you wish visitors to take. And understanding the call to action you are asking the visitor/user to do can vary depending on the goal of your landing page. So understanding what the purpose of the landing page can help the conversion rate. Now knowing some vocabularies we can go into the 5 tips to increase landing page conversions.

1.) NSAMCWADLP & NBALPWACG

What does that even mean? This is the first tip to creating a better and more successful landing page. Knowing these two acronyms NSAMCWADLP stands for “Never start a marketing campaign without a dedicated landing page” and NBALPWACG: “Never build a landing page without a campaign goal.” And the idea behind this is you shouldn’t be rushing to build a landing page or experience when you haven’t established the purpose of the campaign is. Honing in on the why and what is trying to be done is a good starting point for building a good foundation for landing pages.

2.) Pay Attention to your Attention Ratio

An attention ratio is a measure of the number of other links you have compared to the one link or button the customer is required to click on to get a conversion. This is a simple tip, the goal is to get your attention ratio as close to 1:1 ratio. So by reducing the number of other links, you may potentially have on your site can lower your ratio and heighten your chance of success in increasing your conversion rate. Another way is to be more clear and give a better sense of direction or redirect them to the action needed for the conversion.

3.) Test Your Landing Page

You won’t know what is going to be successful and what will be a complete bust until you test your landing pages. Ryan Osman at Obility does this, a/b testing to see what would have a higher rate of success and continues until he has a satisfactory level of conversion rate. One way to do this is to give potential viewers the same ad but sending them to different landing pages. Which they vary so slightly as Ryan Osman would have one ad with a short-form landing page and one with a longer form with more content to test which would be more successful. Making a small arrangement and testing it can give insight into what is effective and not.

4.) Message Match

This focuses on context and the matching of what was said or written on the ad or link before clicking on the link and being sent to the landing page and seeing what was promised. While I won’t go into depth on the 7 Principles of Conversion – Center Design, Context is one of the 7 principles with Attention, (Context), Clarity, Congruency, credibility, closing, and continuance. While all of this is significantly important I am going to focus on “Context” a simple fix that can improve conversion rates. According to MailChimp with the lack of congruence, context, relevance, and sticking to the theme, visitors sent to a page that seems to have nothing to do with the ad itself. Will automatically bounce if they don’t see a connection from the original click. So a thing to keep in mind is “Post – Click success depends on how well you deliver on your pre-click promise”. So matching your ads and what was said or written clearly to your landing page will have better success on conversion rates. 

5.) Build Credibility

Trust, a big component of getting people to trust and following through with your call to action. According to DataBox one way to help increase your conversion rate is to implement reviews to help build credibility. 88% of customers will check out reviews before making a final decision on a purchase–which is why these marketers recommend including trust signals (previous clients, awards, certifications, or testimonials) to boost your landing page conversion rates. Another way to improve credibility is to add trust badges such as “Paypal verified” etc.. and guarantees but don’t overdo them according to WordStream.com.

Citations:

  • “The 7 Principles of Conversion Centered Design.” Stukent, Stukent.com, https://www.stukent.com/expert-sessions/the-7-principles-of-conversion-centered-design/.
  • “MRKT 484 Ryan on Testing Landing Pages.” OSU MediaSpace, Oregon State University, https://media.oregonstate.edu/media/t/0_j1xoorhb.
  • “MRKT 484 Ryan on Testing Landing Pages.” OSU MediaSpace, Oregon State University, https://media.oregonstate.edu/media/t/0_j1xoorhb.
  • Leist, Rachel. “How to Write a Blog Post: A Step-by-Step Guide [ Free Blog Post Templates].” HubSpot Blog, 6 May 2019, https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-start-a-blog#sm.00007ssv1q6ovdkcq1p1c0jjakt6m.
  • Hawke Media. “Increase Your Conversion Rate from Ad to Landing Page.” MailChimp, mailchimp.com/resources/increase-conversion-rate-from-ad-to-landing-page/.
  • Dopson, Elise. “16 Ways to Improve Your Landing Page Conversion Rates: Databox Blog.” Databox, 3 Apr. 2019, databox.com/improve-your-landing-page-conversion-rate.
  • Dane, Johnathan. “12 Tests to Increase Your Landing Page Conversion Rate, Starting Today.” WordStream, 26 July 2019, www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2013/07/11/landing-page-conversion-rate-guide.