5 Steps to Optimizing Your Website for Google Search

Here are the five steps to optimizing your website for higher search rankings:

Step 1 - Discover Keywords That Are Used by Your Audience

Keywords are search terms that people type into the Google search bar each time they are looking for fresh information from a search engine.

A keyword could contain a single word, double words, or a phrase containing three or more words (also known as long-tail keywords). There are lots of keywords that are unique to particular industries or niches.

For instance, the industry "Digital marketing" will have keywords such as SEO, search engine marketing, social media marketing, and sales funnel. As a business owner, you need to identify the keywords that your target audience is using for searching on Google.

Once you are able to do this, you can create valuable content around the keywords, so they can find you online. There are two ways to follow for finding out these keywords – you do guesswork or keyword research.

The guesswork is a trial-and-error effort that may not produce the kind of results you seek but instead lead to a waste of your time. Keyword research is a better option and for this, you need the right tools to help you with it.

Google Trends is a great tool that shows you keyword trends and how popular they are. However, you don't get details about the keywords as Google Trends does not provide search volume and other details you need.

Some SEO tools that should help you with the keyword research are Ahrefs and UberSuggest.

Step 2 - Create Content for Your Audience

Content is created with the objective of providing valuable information to those who need them. Your business goal is to create and publish content that is of great value to your target audience.

This means you need to know the questions they are asking and the kind of information that they seek. You can find out what information they need by asking them directly or getting them to take surveys prepared by you.

Also, you can find questions that are related to your business and brand from Question and Answer websites such as Quora. It's only if your content is relevant to your target audience that you will be able to attract them through search engines.