10 Reasons Websites don’t rank in Google. Pt 1: Relevance

Relevance and Content are the two key words that best describe anything to do with any type of search engine.

Here we talk about relevance.

Relevant to what?
Ok, let’s look at the fundamental role of a Search Engine.
You type in what you are looking for, and the search engine finds you the most relevant answer.

If you typed “mechanic in Portsmouth” in to Google and received a listing of holiday homes in Southend, that wouldn’t be relevant, or more to the point useful!

There are a number of factors the search Engine ranks your site and its pages on, however most importantly it’s the context and content of a page.

Let’s say there was a website for a mechanic and on his home page it contained text such as “local Portsmouth based mechanic specialising in all types of car repairs.” Google would pick up on the words “portsmouth” and “mechanic” and likely rank your site when someone types “mechanic in portsmouth”

Build in relevance from the start
9 times out of 10 when we get asked to optimise a website, the website is already built. The simple truth often is, the website isn’t ranking, because the key phrases that the website is expected to rank for, just don’t exist anywhere on the site.

More importantly, there are often no relevant pages either!

If you can, research your market 1st BEFORE you plan your website. If you know what people are searching for, it’s much easier to plan the pages and content to give your customer what they are looking for. Your website is really for your customer after all, isn’t it?

Research your potential market
It’s a simple process and can be done using Google and systems like Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com).

How does it work? Simple. All search engines capture statistics of how many people search for which key words.

Using this information it’s possible to ascertain the best pages to create and optimise, and the best phrases and words to use on those pages.

Drop us a line or contact us if you’d like to know more.