So you have a new website and you want to get it to the top of Google, well here are my top 10 tips to help you on your way!
- Get a domain name that contains keywords for what you want to rank for. If you are a plumber in Waterford then a domain like “waterfordplumber.com” would be ideal.
- Register a .IE domain name if you are targetting only Irish people. IE domain names gives you a boost on Google.ie.
- Host your website in Ireland with a company like Cloud Host Ireland or Hosting Ireland, though hosting might be a little more expensive here Google will see that your website is hosted in Ireland by its IP address and will rank you higher on Google.ie.
- Have your website built on a CMS like Joomla, Magento, or WordPress, this opens you up to awesome free included SEO tools to improve your website. Make sure you have active SEO and SEF settings.
- Make sure that the non-www version of your website redirects to the www version, otherwise Google will see these as two different websites and will rank them differently.
- Setup meta titles and descriptions for all your pages. Be sure to mention your important keywords here. Note if someone shares your page on Facebook they will see this title and description also.
- Create landing pages, for instance, we help ferry bank bouncy castles and we have created landing pages for different areas they target, for instance, check out this page for Waterford Bouncy Castles.
- Create a blog and update it regularly, Google favors websites that have uniquely and regularly updated content. Using our Waterford Plumber example you could write blogs about common plumbing problems, you could use titles such as “How often should a boiler be serviced” so when someone searches for this they find your business.
- Set up a Google Places for Business listing. Online searches for services are often appended with a geographical location, e.g. ‘Waterford Plumber’.
- Install tracking software such as Google Analytics to analyze the traffic to your website and to tell what is working for you.
