Recently in a Google+ group discussion, a group member wrote about a business who’s website was very low in Google search results when searching for their industry keyword. The group member wanted to know how she could increase the ranking of the website in Google search results.

The answer is four-fold. The website needs these 4 things:

  1. Keywords.  You need to have the keywords (terms) you want your website to be associated with to be on your website’s home page. Use Google Keyword Planner to find the most searched for keywords. Use the keyword planner to find the top 3-4 key phrases people search about that are relevant to your business, and include these phrases in your website’s home page title, headers, sub-headers, and paragraph text. Only include each phrase once or twice, more will see you penalized for keyword-stuffing.
  2. Social signals.  This is essentially online word of mouth, like people sharing your website’s URL (e.g. http://www.yourwebsite.com) on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and any other social media. A good way to generate online “word of mouth” referrals is to join Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups & business community websites, and participate in discussions, taking the opportunity to help people, and in the process demonstrate some relevant expertise. Include your website address in the signature or about section of your profile if you can.
  3. Back links from authority sites. Having a Facebook business page, with your URL in the website profile field is an example of this. Commenting on blog posts on big websites helps too. When you write your comment, there is a section for the author of the comment, and one field is your website URL, which is a golden chance to add a back link to your website.
  4. Local citations. A local citation is an instance of your business’s name, address, phone number, and URL on a website. A business listing on Yellow Pages, White Pages, or Yelp are examples of local citations. For a complete list of directories you can use for local citations, see

If you need help with:

  • keywords and key phrases,
  • your social signals, and online word of mouth,
  • back links from authority sites,
  • local citations,

let me know, and I’ll be glad to help.

If this post raised some questions feel free to ask me a question