7 tips to get higher in Google with SEO

On-page SEO

On-page SEO stands for factors that are completely in your control as a website owner. This includes 3 components:

1. CONTENT

A very important part of ranking high in Google is by offering good content to your visitors.

• Keyword research:
  Get insight into what keywords are important and what your potential customers are searching for. Conduct keyword research at the keyword planner.
• Quality:
  Important when creating your content is quality. It used to be (yes, in online marketing we may call 3 years ago "used to be") that if you had a keyword repeated 20 times in your text and you were #1 in Google. Those times are gone. Offer your readers valuable content that will trigger them to spend more time on your website.

2. TECHNIQUE

• Crawling:
  Good technology behind your website makes it easier for Google to crawl your website. Crawling means that Google indexes and remembers all the pages of your website. Then, when someone searches in Google, all indexed pages are checked and the most relevant ones are displayed. So you understand that crawling is an important part of good SEO. Therefore, make sure you also have a clear structure in your website so that Google understands it faster as well.
• Mobile-friendly:
  Since more searches are done on mobile than desktop these days, a good mobile-friendly website is very important. This is therefore taken into account by Google as one of the most important ranking factors. Thus, a website that is not responsive will never rank high either.

3. HTML

HTML is the code in which a website is written. Some elements in the HTML can make it easier for Google to understand the page.

• Title and description:
  These are the descriptions you see in Google. Make sure the (HTML) title is relevant and not too short. There is then a chance that Google itself will decide to show a different title in the search results. The description is not a ranking factor but it can make you stand out more through the proper use of keywords and call-to-actions.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO are factors you cannot directly control. Google created these in order to evaluate a website even better, since you can influence the on-page SEO factors. Otherwise, you could play tricks to appear more relevant, but this is not possible!

4. TRUST

Search engines are getting smarter and also know when to trust a website and when not to.

• Authority:
  This is actually a "vague" ranking factor since no one knows exactly what the signals are. There are some suspicions, though. For example, the number of (high quality) links plays a positive role and bad reviews play a negative role.
• Engaged:
  This factor is measured in several ways. For example, Google looks at session duration (how long visitors stay on your page), whether visitors click through, or whether they abandon immediately. This again shows that quality content is important.

5. LINKS

• Quality:
  Famous link building has also changed a lot in recent years. A few years ago, it worked very well when you purchased hundreds of links placed somewhere on some website. After all, a link was a link.
  Now this is severely penalized and instead it is all about quality. Therefore, get links from websites that are relevant to your website. For example, a link from a supplier is very interesting.

6. LOCAL

The search results you see nowadays are different for everyone. This makes it important to take a number of aspects into account.

• Country:
  When you operate internationally, it is important that you offer content for all the countries in which you want to be found. Having only an English site will not be a success for every company.
• Location:
  Optimizing on a specific location is of course not interesting for every company. Especially businesses with a small sales area such as a bakery, hairdresser, restaurant or florist will benefit from local marketing.

7. SOCIAL

Google says it does not use social media as a ranking factor. Yet it is included as a success factor because it indirectly contributes to more SEO success. When content is shared, it generates links and engagement, which are direct ranking factors.

• Reputation:
  Actually, the same rules apply here as for getting links. When someone shares your content, the impact is greater when it comes from an account with a good reputation.