How to quickly increase your publication’s Google visibility by creating, optimizing, and organizing your online content
Boosting a website’s Google visibility is both an art and a science. While we know there are certain key steps that publishers should take to increase website traffic, we also know that there are some more creative solutions for optimization.
Increasing a publication’s Google visibility is the goal of every SEO strategy. Accomplishing that task begins with following these key steps:
Steps for Increasing Google Visibility
Step 1: Identify the Right Keywords
The first step in increasing your publication’s Google visibility is identifying the right keywords. If you have a community news publication, then your keyword universe will largely revolve around the name of your city or town. If you run a niche blog or online magazine, then your keyword universe will have more to do with the content you cover. Every website has a natural universe of keywords. You can find out what people are searching for to find your website by looking in Google Analytics or asking your web developer for assistance. The higher the annual search volume for a particular keyword or phrase, the greater relevance it likely has for your website. Most websites have been 5,000 and 20,000 keyword phrases in their keyword universe. The key to getting your keywords right is to do the necessary research up front.
Step 2: Seek Out the Competition
We all have industry competitors. Who are yours? Do a little Googling to identify which publications are competing for the same keywords as your own. Web Publisher PRO can assist you with this process by running an advanced keyword audit. To run a more basic audit on your own, choose 20 or 30 phrases that are relevant to your publication and Google each one. What do you see? The websites that show up on each search engine results page (SERP) are your biggest keyword competitors. These are the publications you’ll be competing against for dominance in online search, so it’s a good idea to have a look around their websites and find out how they are handling things like keyword optimization and monetization.
Step 3: Create an Editorial Calendar
You might be wondering what an editorial calendar has to do with Google visibility. An editorial calendar is how publications track when they are posting their best content, and when they have holes in their schedules that they need to fill. Google puts weight on both content relevancy and frequency, and a publisher that posts new high-quality content at frequent intervals is going to rank higher in SERPs than a publisher that only posts a handful of times each month. Get creative with your editorial calendar and look for opportunities to optimize your content based on the keywords you’re targeting.
Step 4: Optimize Your Articles
You are the expert in your particular field or niche. Use that knowledge to refine your keyword targets based on the keywords in your keyword universe. Encourage your writers and editors to choose article topics based on relevant phrases, so you can publish content that’s likely to continue generating clicks well after its initial run. Long-form content, evergreen content, ebooks, and business directories are all excellent drivers of website traffic. If you are looking to increase your publication’s Google visibility, these content types would be a good place to begin.
Step 5: Don’t Forget the Analytics
Never stop tracking your successes and never stop looking for new areas of improvement. Regardless of how much you’ve improved your Google visibility in a short period of time, there are always more keywords to target. Whether you work with a web development firm like Web Publisher PRO or you opt to go it alone, make sure to review your analytics reports each month and track how your audience development metrics are trending over time. Based on the results you’re achieving, you may want to add variations to your data to identify top performing articles.
If you’re following the steps outlined above, you should begin to see your Google visibility rising after just a few months. To learn even more about SEO and the impact a solid search strategy can have on your digital publication, read SEO for Local News Publishers.
