According to a study, organic search drives 53% of website traffic, while paid search only accounts for 15%. For e-commerce websites, 39% of global traffic comes from online searches, with a mere 4% attributed to paid search ads and the rest being organic. In Australia, 93% of online experiences often start with a search engine, and 75% never scroll past the first search results page.

These statistics highlight the significance of Google rankings for e-commerce businesses and websites. However given the fierce competition with thousands of other websites, ranking high on search engines becomes challenging. A strong digital presence and search engine ranking are crucial to attaining competitive advantages in today’s digitalized era. 

Mid and large-sized businesses invest heavily in digital marketing and SEO activities. But you don’t need a huge budget to improve your Google rankings. A few smart tips and strategies allow even small businesses to land higher on search results.

Here are some tips to improve your rankings on search engines without investing a huge sum:  

1.  Consider SEO Consultancy

Building an in-house SEO team can be expensive as it requires hiring various professionals, including a website developer, SEO specialist, content developer, and copywriter. On the other hand, an SEO consultancy already has these experts on board, working on multiple projects, saving your company from managing a whole team.

With the increasing popularity of SEO, many consultancies have emerged in Australia, claiming to provide top-notch services. However, some may offer only automatically generated reports from Google or online SEO tools, failing to deliver actual results. Moreover, they might lock clients into long-term contracts, leaving them with no choice but waiting for the promised outcomes.

Partnering with reliable SEO service providers in Australia, like P Singh, is advised. Explore psingh.com.au to get further details and benefit from the best SEO services.

While investing in SEO tools can be helpful, knowing how to utilize them effectively is crucial for improving your website's ranking. Hiring a reliable SEO consultancy becomes essential since their expertise and knowledge can further propel your website's success in the competitive online landscape.

2.  Study the Competition

Hiring an SEO consultancy can save businesses a lot of time. However, as a small business, you can take some steps to improve your Google search rankings before you hire a consultancy.

The first step is studying the competition. You can take out a list of keywords from websites related to your product or service. Then, assess the competitors that rank on the first page. You can then use tools like Surfer SEO to generate a list of keywords and their densities to generate similar content.

3.  Check Your Current Ranking

Google uses web crawlers to assess the content on the internet and make an index of websites. If you have just launched your website, chances are you won’t find it on search engines because it is not yet indexed.

You must add original content to your website and wait for web crawlers to index it. A great way to see if your website is indexed is to search with the exact name. If the search results show your website when you search with its specific name, that means web crawlers have gotten to your website.

4.  Detect and Resolve Website Issues

A perfect website design doesn’t mean your website will get ranked. There might be some underlying issues causing trouble. For instance, if your website takes longer than a second to load, you will get a high bounce rate, which is not a good indicator. 

Website Speed

For instance, a website that takes 1 second to load has a 7% bounce rate. The bounce rate increases to 11% when the website takes 3 seconds to load. The higher bounce rate causes Google to regard the website content as ingenuine.

Assess your website’s speed on mobile and desktop. You can then make changes to the website accordingly. Some great tips to improve website speed are:

·         Reduce image sizes to less than 100 kb.

·         To maintain image quality, use an image optimization tool.  

·         Shift your website to a content delivery network (CDN) like Cloudflare since it’ll reduce website loading time and keep it secure.

Broken Links

Assess your website links to detect any broken links or unresponsive pages. If you have created broken backlinks, it’ll hurt your website’s ability to rank on search engines.

To detect and fix all the issues on the website, you can use Website SEO Checker by Sitechecker.

5.  Make Website Mobile Responsive

63% of organic search visits are done via mobile devices. Many businesses fail to realize that websites should be mobile-responsive to get this traffic. A mobile responsive website means the layout and content adjust to the screen size.

Furthermore, if you are using popular website design tools like Wix, Shopify, or WordPress, you must invest to update your website to a mobile-friendly version.

6.  Set Up an SEO Dashboard

SEO tools are quite expensive. If you hire an SEO consultancy, you can access these expensive tools within your package. However, if you’ve not hired an SEO agency and want to assess your SEO metrics, you can always use Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

The GA4 sets up an SEO dashboard to explore the customer’s journey on your website. You can also connect the Google Search Console to your dashboard to get keyword data.

7.  Develop a Backlink Profile

Backlinking is crucial to increase your website’s authenticity. However, sometimes harmful backlinks can quickly de-rank your website. So, it is important to monitor and disavow unwanted links regularly.

Furthermore, explore your competitor’s backlink profile. If they are getting backlinks from a reputable website, you might also consider contacting these domains. Or you can reach out to domains with similar authority to build a similar strength of your backlink profile.

Conclusion

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a multifaceted task that involves various components. Simply adding keyword-researched blogs or pages to your website is not enough. To ensure effective SEO, optimize website speed, create a mobile-friendly layout, and build a strong backlink profile. These efforts collectively enhance user experience and make the website more appealing to web crawlers. The tips provided in this article can significantly improve user experience and boost your website's search engine ranking. However, it's important to recognize that SEO requires the expertise of an experienced team.