Introduction
Article Sections
Building a website is fun because you can share and express your opinions online with the world. We all have something unique, interesting and thought-provoking to share so we take to the web and start writing something that someone might like or have a reaction to. To make things fancy, we add a picture that we took with our phones or a video that we recorded. The mind loves to be stimulated and engaged so a picture can really tell a thousand words. A video is even more engaging than an image because it is animated and has audio. However you decide to share your thoughts with the world, there is one thing that is very important. What is the point of having a website if no one sees or hears you? How does someone find you online when there are literally millions of people trying to do the same thing that you are? Not only must you create something compelling to attract people, but you must be found also. This is where we take to Google and try to get our website on their search engine. How do we get on Google? I will share with you my thoughts on getting on the most popular search engine.
Why is Google Search Console So Important?
A lot of times, at least from what I have experienced, everyone knows about Google Analytics. Analytics is just as important as Search Console because Analytics tells you about the traffic that you are getting on your website. What about the traffic before people come to your website? You need both. You need to know how people found your website and what they do once they get there. In some cases, you might want to know what they do even after they leave your website. Knowing your web traffic before, during and after will help you know what is going on with the people coming to your website. With this information, you can focus on the strongest pages on your website and update and tailor them to your users. This will help you make the most of your time as it might seem tempting to update a page that gets no traffic but prioritize what your users want. I wrote an article that talks about writing new articles versus updating them. Since people spend so much time searching on Google every day, we need to know how our website is performing on it. I will start with defining some basic terminology and describing what they mean.
Terminology
Impressions
This is what I focus on for a brand new website, the impressions. Impressions are the number of times your web page shows on Google when people search for your website. These numbers are exciting to receive because you get to see how well you are ranking on Google. It makes sense that the more times that you show on Google, means you are ranking higher and performing well. This also means that people are searching for keywords that match your pages and they are looking for something that is related to your pages. So you can gauge how close your content is to what people are looking for. This is important to keep in mind because you direct your content more toward what your audience is looking for. With our time being so precious, we only have enough time when it comes to getting content out. So we need to make sure that we are giving people what they are looking for. This is why I stated before that you should prioritize what your audience wants to read versus what you want to write. This does not mean that you cannot write about that topic that no one is looking for. Just that if you are pressed for time and need to get something out there, then maybe you should check your impressions and write something that you know people actually want to read.
Clicks
These are the actual clicks that you get when someone finds a web page to your website on Google. Clicks are pretty hard to get because once people find your web page, they have to be compelled to click on it. You need to write enticing meta titles and descriptions. They call them meta titles and descriptions but they are just the content that you see on search engines that summarize what your page is about. Writing the titles and descriptions is an art because you only have so much space to tell users what your pages are about. Titles typically are up to around 60 characters long and descriptions about 200 characters. These are just estimates and if you go over, they just get cut off at the end. Try to be as succinct as possible, do not worry if you go over character on some of your pages. If your pages are not performing well in getting traffic then you will either need to re-write these titles and descriptions or the actual content on your page. So chances are, you might need to re-do these again later anyway. Not only do you need to have brief titles and descriptions, but they also need to have the right keywords for what people are looking for. So you need to do some keyword research, try using Ahrefs and SEM Rush. Both of these services will help you find new keywords and therefore new possible topics to write about for your website. Of course you could just use the auto-complete from Google but these services are better because they provide stats like the volume of searches a keyword phrase gets per month and how hard it is to rank for keywords.
CTR (Click Through Rate)
This is just the ratio of the number of clicks that you get compared to the number of impressions for a keyword phrase. For simplicity, if you got 100 impressions for a keyword phrase with 10 clicks, then your click through rate would be 10/100, or 10%. A decent CTR would be around 2%. This is why having so many impressions with no click is not good. The reason why is because this means that your website is showing up a lot but no one is clicking on it. What this could mean is that your ranking is really low and no one wants to click on your web page. Pretty much, with people expecting to have their questions answered instantly, people really do not go past the first page of Google. It is either page one or bust. To put it even more directly, it is either number one or bust. You do not have to be the first spot all of the time, but you do need to be near there. With all of the competition to rank, it makes sense to really count anything but page one as a victory. This does place more pressure on you to get your content out faster but make sure that you write something unique or special that only you know. You need to get those clicks along with your impressions. So you need to balance writing really detailed articles in your area of expertise and also know when to spread out and try writing new articles that might require some research. So really you are taking an opportunity to not only educate your audience on what you know but also for yourself as your delve and expand your knowledge into new fields. So you grow along with your audience and you never know where it takes you.
Average Position
This statistic relates to the previous section because it shows you where you ranked for your keyword phrase. Having an average position of 45 means that you ranked on the fifth spot of page five. How the position works is that Google shows ten results per page. So if you ranked 45, that means that you ranked past the fourth page of results to the next page, which is the fifth page. From page five, you rank fifth. So this is how you calculate your position. Since the Google algorithm changes occasionally and shuffles pages around. This is to keep us constantly focused on ranking and also ensures that other people get a chance to rank high. Instead of keeping the same websites at the top of page one every day, Google has to modify their algorithm so that the rankings are fair for everyone. Also, this makes people use paid ads like Google Ads to rank in the paid spots of the search results. I have my thoughts on paid advertisements and will write about them eventually. I mostly focus on organic free traffic, which is what most of my articles on this website are about.
How Do People Find My Website?
There are many ways in general that people can find your website:
- A direct link
- Typing in the domain the browser
- Finding your website in Google
Now obviously, I am going to talk about the last one where people use Google because that is what this article is mainly about. I thought that I would share other ways to get to your website. So basically people can only find your website if it is on Google. Not every single website is on Google because Google has to value and deem your website worthy enough to be on its search engine. The reason why is that Google is in the business of finding the best websites that answer the questions that people are asking online. Most of the time people go online to know more about something or how to do something.
People Go Online to Find Answers to Their Questions and Problems
When I say people are asking questions online, this is the same as saying people are looking for something online. The reason why I say people are asking questions online is because they are looking for answers to a problem that they have. If people knew how to solve their own problems, then they would not have to go online and look for the answers that resolve their issue. This is why businesses create products and services for people, because we all have problems in life and we cannot do everything ourselves. With only 24 hours in a day, we spend most of that time working and running errands. Any little time left to take care of the problems that we have need the help of other people who are experts of whatever we need help with. This is why some businesses who create solutions to problems that do not exist often fail because there is no need for this kind of product or service. This is the great thing about life, we are all experts in something. We are all really good at whatever it is we do for a living. So when we need someone to help us, we just consult someone else. Google realizes this is why their search engine is there to call upon the help of experts for subjects that we are not as knowledgeable in.
What Should I Write About? Let Your Audience Help You
You should write about your passion in life. What subject do you know the most about? If you happen to know something that a lot of people do not, then you will get a good ranking website. This is called a niche topic, one with currently little competition to rank online. Lower competition topics are easier to rank for because no one else is doing them and you can’t corner the market if you get your content out there fast enough before anyone. Again, not everyone is knowledgeable in a niche topic. Many of us know about something that everyone else has. This is why we need to use the help of Google Search Console to tell us what the most popular pages on our website are. You can see what keywords people typed in to have your website show up on Google. I really love this because how we all search online is different. Someone might search for something using these words, someone else will use a different set of words. People might use the same set of words in a different order. There is a lot of variation on what people search for on Google. This is where we can learn from each other and you get new ideas for articles from your users.
Relate Even the Most Technical Topics to Everyday Simple Life Concepts
From there, we can either update those pages or we can write new articles that go into greater details on subjects that stem off the main article. It just takes some creativity and a little bit of luck in order to get the right content out there at the right time. This is why many of my articles are in technical subjects like programming, website and SEO. I always try my best to relate these articles to real-life concepts so that it makes them easier to comprehend and digest. I do not want these articles to be just a bunch of facts that are just being put out there. Even if you do not know anything about programming or websites, I still want to write so that anyone can get something out of them. This is why I add something that tries to add some simple concepts that can make even the most technical of topics easier to understand. So when you write your articles, no matter how complex, relate them to everyday life and you will have an audience that goes beyond just your technical base.
What Pages Should I Update? Try Linking Your Strongest and Weakest Pages Together
This can go either two ways. You can focus on your best performing pages with the most impressions and clicks. These are definitely your winners and keep them fresh and new so that they continue to get the traffic for your website. This might involve both updating the page itself or creating a new page that stems off from a topic in your main article. You can also try to update those pages which could use more help. You can try to take your weaker performing pages and try to relate them to topics that are getting you the most traffic. If you are able to successfully do this, then you might be able to create new content that is interesting and not yet tapped. Depending on how relevant your strong and weak performing pages are, this might be a tricky endeavor to tackle. However, if you do some research and really think about how to tie these pages together, then you might be onto something. Always remember to link your articles together in a new tab so that users can continue to read more of your precious knowledge in your other articles.
Why Is My Website Not Ranking on Google?
Your Content is Not Something that People Are Looking For
There could be several reasons why your website is not on Google. I will try to go over the most common basic ones that might be relevant to you. One reason is because your website has content that no one is interested in reading. If no one is searching keywords for whatever you wrote, then Google has no reason to add your website to their search engine. I know that a lot of people talk about niches because they have very little competition. Once you have exhausted a niche because it is so small, you will have to eventually expand. That means delving into topics that will be more generalized. The keyword competition to rank will be higher along with the search volume. Hopefully by this time, you will have some traffic coming into your website and will be able to try to branch out from your niche and expand your topic list.
Your Pages are Slow with Too Many Assets
Another reason is that your website might have great content but it is too slow or has too many user experience issues. This is especially pertinent if your website is not geared for mobile. I do not just mean having a responsive design, but your assets too. I mean having too many large images, and CSS and JS that not only make your website pretty and interactive, but slow also. I have stated that people just want their information already and having them wait for some images that may not or may not relate to the story that you are telling them might hinder your chances of showing up on Google. Sometimes websites just have pictures to look pretty. That is great but be sure to optimize them if they are just there for decoration and have no impact on what you are trying to tell your users.
Your Website Might Be On Google, But it Ranks Really Low
When I say that your website is not ranking on Google, that could also mean that your website is on Google but it ranks too low for anyone to actually click on it. If your website is past the first page, you might as well not be on it in the first place. Page two might be okay, but that is the furthest anyone will go. Anything past page two means that you need to get your content and website in great and push towards page one. Being on any page past the second page means that you will have a harder time getting clicks. The reason why is because most people want their information right away and will click whatever sounds interesting on the first page. The only way people will find you further down the list is if the search that they performed returned many irrelevant results. This forces users to keep looking for answers page after page and they might see your pages along the way. This tends to be the case the more specific and niche a search is. The more specific a search is, the harder it is to find content related to it. Which is why people emphasize niches so much. If you know something very specific that no one else knows, you can corner a market if you work really hard and get that first spot before anyone else.
Summary
Google Search Console is a great way to see how people find your website and which pages get the most impression and clicks. This can help you with finding new topics to write about when you need some help. Your audience is valuable because they are telling you what they want to know. So just deliver what they are looking for and you should be good. Remember to relate even the most technical of topics to everyday simple concepts that anyone can grasp. This will help you generate even more content and turn some of it evergreen. Evergreen content lasts forever and you can connect the two, then you will have content that is relevant even well after obsolescence. If you can update your strong and weak articles and use new content to link them together, then the strong article can help raise the value of your weaker articles. This is a way to nurture and provide some attention to your articles that could use help. While at same, strengthening your strongest articles with some updated content.
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