Everyone knows the importance of a website. “I want it to look this way, I want it to look that way, I want this to fly in here, I want this to fly in there.”  “Tweak this tweak that.”

People often spend a lot of time developing and designing their own website, but they have forgotten another important part which is marketing.
After launching your website, do you know how can people find your website online? Can search engine spiders from Google and Yahoo crawl your website easily?

Before directly going into today’s topic of 5 actionable task for you to get your website on Google and Yahoo.

2 main functions of Search Engine

Let’s first enlighten you the functions of search engines. Search Engines like Google and Yahoo have basically 2 main functions:

1. Crawl

Google and Yahoo crawl multi-milions of websites daily with their own search engine robot like spiders and bots.

2. Create the most relevant and related search results

With the help of spiders and bots, search engine will crawl and identify website that   are       relevant to the search users queries and create the list of search results related and relevant to the keyword.

Now you know the functions of a search engine, below are 5 actions you can use to help increase your website presence online.

1. Conduct an extensive Keyword Research

Conducting keyword research is very important and considered the first step to help you increase your website presence.

It is through keyword research, you will know people are searching for, besides that we will also know the users intention of when they search online.

For example – Iphone 6 price, we know that user are searching for the price of Iphone 6. It is important to identify a list of targeted keywords as this sets the direction for your websites marketing.

Here’s 7 steps to conducting keyword research

STEP 1: Look through each page of your website.

STEP 2: Find out what is the page promoting? What is the purpose of the page?

STEP 3: Think of a Primary and Secondary Keyword on your website

STEP 4: Go to forums, and various online community place, look for similar keywords relevant to your website.

STEP 5: Log in to GOOGLE KEYWORD Planner using your GMAIL ACCOUNT.

STEP 6: Put in the keywords you find through the forums, and community sites in GOOGLE KEYWORD PLANNER and then look for additional keyword suggestions.

STEP 7: Compile the list and you have just done keyword research.

Google Instant Suggest
You might have notice how smart Google is, before typing everything, they suggest a list of keywords for you. Wonder how this works? Take a look below

 

See before finish typing ‘seo malaysia company’ Google instantly suggest a list of keywords for users to click on it.

This function called Google Instant Suggest which helps increase users experience as it will make people think of how SMART GOOGLE is.
Keywords that appear on instant suggest are the frequently search keyword phrases.

Hence you can also choose the relevant keyword suggested and put it in the search engine.

Google Related Search Queries

It is also important to know besides the targeted keyword users search, what are other keywords users search on Google. This is known as Google Related Search queries.

For example when you search for keywords:

 

Look at relate keywords and compile a list of keywords and put it into Google Keyword planner to identify the search volume and competition.

Long Tail Vs Short Tail Keyword

Now you know how to conduct keyword research, it is time for you to also know which to focus?

There are many different types of keywords for your website, which one should you prioritize?

Long tail keywords means more specific keywords like for example – seo company in Malaysia, Best SEO Service, Best SEO Company in Malaysia, SEO Malaysia Price.
These are basically the keywords that are longer and more specific.

Short tail keywords are more general like SEO Malaysia, SEO. Which takes a longer time to rank.

The 80:20 rule – 80% long tail, 20% short tail. Get up on Google fast with long tail keywords, it is best to rank your website with a variation of keywords.

Where to find long tail keywords in Malaysia?

Famous General forums in Malaysia are:

1. Lowyat ForumMalaysia
2. Cari.com.my
3. Mudah.my

Now you know how to conduct keyword research and using the 80:20 rule to focus, it is time now to look at the next section which is On Page Optimization.

2. On Page Optimization

With the list of keywords, create descriptive title tags, meta descriptions, heading tags and content and the variety of anchor text.

Title tag:

Title tag is considered the most important part of On Page Optimization. Google spiders normally scan through a list of websites and identify keywords in the title tag.

Guidelines to write:

Title length – 50 to 60 characters
Add in adjective in front to describe the targeted keywords.

Example

Primary Keyword | Secondary | Brand Name

Real Example
Malaysia Best SEO Company | SEO Services | ABC

Just make sure you do not spam keywords or stuff keywords into the title tag.

Example of SPAM KEYWORDS

SEO MALAYSIA | MALAYSIA SEO | ONLINE SEO MALAYSIA | SEO ONLINE MALAYSIA

Meta Descriptions

Meta Descriptions are summary of the website.

Guide to write

Meta Descriptions length  – 150 to 160 characters.

Meta Descriptions helps users to click on the website when they see your website on the search results. Make your meta descriptions natural. Do not spam the descriptions with keywords.
Heading text – H1, H2, H3

Heading helps make your website content easy to read. We are humans, when we see an article that is cluttered with words, it will bore us to death if the content is not interesting. Heading text divide the content and it will make it look natural and interesting

Content

With the compiled list of keywords, it will help you create different topic of for your website content. This will help you answer the person’s need or queries. When someone search on Google, they are searching for something, they are validating, they are basically searching for a solution.

Hence content that are on your website, must be added value to users that comes to your website. Make sure all pages in your website have good quality content.
To make your website appear on Google make sure your website content length is at minimum 300 words, with 3% keywords appearing in your content a combinations of synonyms.

Keywords in your content should be at 2-4% max base on your content length. Depend on the nature of your business or industry, a blog will help increase website presence when you update your blog frequently. A blog will create a knowledge platform for users to go.

Blogging

1. Blog Post Writing – 40%
2. Blog Post Marketing – 60%

It is best to divide your blogging time to 40% of your time to be writing content, and remaining 60% should be marketing your blog post. Blog writing alone isn’t enough if you do not share it through your audience’s channel of communication.

Simple way of illustrating it would be through the SMCR model

SENDER –> MESSAGE –> CHANNEL –> RECEIVERS

(Company)  (Content)     (Social Media) (Audience/niche)

Now say for example you are the sender (company A), you begin the process of doing keyword research of the receivers (audience/niche), you basically look at what words or phrases they use to search, make sure the message (CONTENT) relates to the users, and the channel (Social Media) – where do this audience access information. Different audience uses different social medias and different channel of communication. Different types of audience access or evaluate information differently. Hence it is important to have a strategy behind to look how you can divide your time wisely on the 40:60 rule.

Put yourself in shoe of the audience

Ask these questions

1. What is something different about your own company that other competitors do not have. USP
2. Why should I buy from you?
3. Knowing what and knowing how is easy. But sometimes you need to brainstorm about why customer needs you? Connecting the dots of why customer must use YOU will help you stand out.
4. Am I a leader of an industry or am I a follower?
5. A leader dare to try new things, dare to share and guide people. What are things you are educating your customer or what are things your customer ought to know?

Now you have conduct keyword research, you know how to optimize the keyword on your website, is it enough? If you have the best content out there but your website loads at turtle or snail speed, your user will click the back button and go to your other competitors website. This leads to the next topic

3. Website Page Loading Speed

How fast does your page load?

Put yourself again in the shoes of your audience, if you go to a website today and the website loads very slow. What will you feel ?

What will you react? Most likely you will click F5 for one or twice, if it is still very slow, you will normally click the back button and go for other website.

DO YOU WANT YOUR AUDIENCE to click the back button and go to your COMPETITORS?

Hence make sure your page loading speed is fast.

Some activities you can perform in your website are:

1. Enable Compression – GZIP
2. Minify Javascript, Minify CSS, Minify HTML
3. Optimize your image

Make sure your website has also mobile responsive functionality coded in your website. When people go directly to the website on mobile you stand out from the rest. Your site is responsive and easy to read.

4. Website XML Sitemap

A sitemap will help search engine crawl your website easily. Check this out on how you can create a sitemap.

5. Content Marketing Strategy

Is having good quality in the website enough? Besides writing and publishing content, it is essential to look at how you can distribute your content, what are various ways to generate leads through your content. Which channels will help you generate leads, which does not generate, how can you convert leads into a customer? This are the various content marketing strategy that you need to have.

– A content calender

– A list of target audience channels

– Various version of landing page

To see optimal result, you  should conduct ab testing.

What colour to put in, what copy converts, what email copy will people open and read, what content formats will people engage, what kind of post people will share out, how to create content that goes viral. This requires a lot of testing to see which works and which does not.

To recap – what we have learn

5 task for you to increase website presence

– Keyword Research

– On Page Optimization

– Website Page Loading Speed

– Website XML sitemap

– Content Marketing Strategy

Do share this out to your someone you can add value to.

Thank You and Have a Awesome day!