Search Visibility: How to Improve Your Google Ranking

What Is Search Visibility?

Search visibility is a metric that tells you what percentage of all possible organic clicks a website is getting for a given keyword. Search visibility is a great metric to help you figure out if you’ve been hit with an algorithm update or a penalty. It tells you how big your piece of the available traffic pie really is, and it gives you a birds-eye-view perspective on your site’s overall SEO performance. If you are only looking at your raw traffic numbers, you’re not getting as much insight in terms of how much more traffic is there still to grab.

“But Isn’t SEO Dead?”

Isn't SEO Dead?

For those who are not familiar, every year in the search industry, there is a clickbait article about SEO being dead. Some of you may really believe that SEO is dying, but you would be foolish to do so: “As technology continues to evolve, SEOs will constantly deal with new ways of searching, new devices to search on, and new types of searches (like voice search, or searches done by my oven) but the one thing that will remain constant is why people search” (Ryan Jones, SEO Director at SapientRazorfish). SEO is an ever-evolving game of cat and mouse. Sure, the tactics used change, but the goal of upping your rankings is constant, and achieving that goal is often like trying to catch a tiny, quickly moving mouse.

4 Ways to Make Your Site More Visible in Google Search Results

1. Add your site to Google Search Console

Google Search Console

By submitting your website and sitemap to Google Search Console, you are telling the search giant that your website exists, something which—as you might expect—is key to appearing in search results. But that’s not the only reason to do so:

  • Google Search Console’s tools and reports can help you measure your site’s search traffic and performance. You can see which queries bring users to your site, analyze your site’s impressions, clicks, and position on Google Search.
  • Fix issues. Google will email alerts when they identify problems on your site. You can see which URLs are affected by these issues and tell Google when you’ve fixed them.
  • Ensure that your website optimized for Google Search results. The URL Inspection tool provides detailed crawl, index, and serving information about your pages, directly from the Google index. And the Mobile Usability Test will show you how to improve your site’s mobile usability with customized reports.

2. Add your site to Google My Business

With a Google My Business account, you get more than a business listing. Your free Business Profile lets you easily connect with customers across Google Search and Maps. By registering your business on Google My Business can help it appear in relevant geographic search results. When you do this, Google will send a postcard containing a pin to your business address. You will use this to verify your business on Google. This verification lets Google know that your business operates in the physical location you stated, meaning that you have a stronger chance of appearing in search results and on Google Maps for people who are searching for a business like yours in the area in which you operate. You can also post photos and offers to your profile to show what makes your business unique, and give customers reasons to choose you every time. Google My Business is a massive part of local SEO, and if your business relies on attracting customers in your area, then registering with this service is absolutely vital.

3. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly

You invested thousands of dollars to rank on Google. And it worked. You rank higher than your competition for several top keywords. Your organic search traffic is going through the roof. You are in lead conversion heaven. Until now—you made one tiny (read: colossal) mistake—you neglected the mobile version of your site. Mobile has changed the world. Today, nearly everyone has smartphones with them, constantly communicating and looking for information. In many countries, the number of smartphones has surpassed the number of personal computers; having a mobile-friendly website has become a critical part of having an online presence.

Three years ago, Google introduced its experiments with mobile-first indexing. Last year, they announced that they now use mobile-first indexing for over half of the pages shown in search results globally. Mobile-first indexing is how Google crawls and indexes the web now. Instead of looking at the desktop version of the page, Google looks at the mobile version of the page. If your desktop pages are different from your mobile pages both in terms of content and structured data, then your rankings will be impacted. Google has generally moved sites that have parity between mobile and desktop pages first to mobile-first indexing. But with over half of the search results now indexed through mobile-first indexing, it is just a matter of time until your web pages are moved over as well. Mobile is critical to your business’s ranking—whether you’re blogging about your favorite sports team, working on the website for your community theater, or selling products to potential clients. Make sure that visitors can have a good experience on your site when they’re visiting from their mobile devices.

4. Start using Google Ads

When you advertise with Google Ads, you’re investing in your business. Google is far and away the most used search engine, receiving 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide. Not only that, but the Google Ads platform has been around for nearly twenty years, so it has a strong position in the area of paid advertising. Google is a resource used by people around the world to ask questions that are answered with a combination of paid advertisements and organic results. Google Ads offers different ad formats and features, allowing you to customize your ads to your various business goals, like adding a clickable “Call” button to your ads to get more phone calls, or using video ads to showcase your brand.

Pay per click (PPC) is now a basic internet marketing tool. Very few businesses can afford to ignore it. You decide how much you want to spend, and pay only when someone interacts with your ad, like clicking your text ad or watching your video ad. According to Google, “for every $1 a business spends on Google Ads, they receive $8 in profit through Google Search and Ads.” Your business can’t not afford to start advertising with Google.

Remember, your competitors are using Google Ads. Thousands of companies use Google Ads to promote their businesses, which means that even if your business is ranking organically for a search keyword, your results are being pushed down the page, beneath your competitors.

Wrapping Things Up

Setting up and maintaining all of these tools takes a lot of time. Don’t have time to do it yourself? Don’t worry; as a badged Google Partner, Armor has the expertise to help grow your business. Contact us today to schedule an appointment.