If you're like most business owners, you've invested a substantial amount of money and time into creating the perfect website, making it visually appealing, easy to navigate, filled with useful content, and integrated into your business. You might think your work is done, that now it's time to reap the benefits of your online presence. Unfortunately, you'd be wrong.
You have a website, but now you need traffic, and with billions of sites competing for the attention of your potential customers, it's harder than ever to get your website to stand out. Not to mention that your website might not even appear on search engine returns, or if it does appear, it's buried under thousands of other results.
To get traffic to your website, you need a digital marketing strategy that focuses on the biggest and most important search engine of all: Google. This article will not only help you answer that critical question, how can I put my website on Google, but also provide you with resources that can help your site stand out from the crowd.
Why Google?
Before we answer the perennial questions:
- How can I put my website on Google?
- How can I make my website stand out on Google?
It's important to understand why you should focus on this particular search engine. For better or worse, Google has complete market dominance over other search engines for a number of reasons
First, Google has indexed a storehouse of billions of websites, much more than any of its competitors like Bing or Yahoo. With more sites indexed, Google provides its users with a larger and more diverse search.
Google also has many more users per day than any other search engine. With each use, its algorithm learns a little more about how to best match a user's search with a search return.
These two advantages have turned Google into the tech giant it is today, so much so that when you want to search the web, you simply say you are going to "Google it," not "Yahoo it" or "DuckDuckGo it." With its ever-growing database of websites and more users per day helping to refine its algorithm, Google's continued market dominance is all but certain.
List Your Website on Google's Search Results
Just because your website is published doesn't mean it will automatically find its way onto Google. Google "crawls" the internet with its Googlebot-also called a "spider"-looking for new websites to index and store in its database. It's likely that Google's spider will eventually find your site, but you can speed up the process and start getting traffic right away by asking Google to index your site via the Google Search Console.
Before you can use Google Search Console to request indexing, you'll need to verify ownership of your site. The process is fairly straightforward, and Google will walk you through it. Once you've responded to your verification email and completed the necessary steps, you will have a Google verified site. Now you need to ask Google to crawl your website. You can submit a sitemap to Google in its search console, and the Googlebot will get to work.
Make Your Website Stand Out on Google's Search Results
Now that you understand how to answer the question: how can I put my website on Google, let's look at a few digital marketing strategies that can help you stand out among your competitors.
When you search for something on Google, you get two different types of search results. At the very top of the search engine results page (or SERP), you will find Google Ads. Below the Google Ads, you will find what's called organic search returns or search results that Google thinks most closely match your request.
Google Ads are a great way to get your website at the very top of search returns that closely match the products or services that the search user is looking for. Google Ads work off of a bidding system. The more money you are willing to spend on certain keywords in search queries, the higher up you will appear in the search rankings for those keywords.
Google Ads can offer an effective way to generate traffic immediately. Also, Google Ad tools allow you to experiment with different keywords from month to month, giving you the ability to measure the success of various marketing strategies, all while working within your own flexible ad budget. But the cost of running ads for highly competitive keywords can make it too expensive for businesses with smaller budgets, and often ad users not trained in advertising or digital marketing cannot maximize the features of Google Ads.
Another way of standing out is by focusing not on paid ads but on the organic search results. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about carefully selecting keywords your potential customers might use in a Google search, and by writing web-based content that uses those particular keywords. But relevant keywords are only half of a smart SEO strategy. Your website also needs to prove its credibility to Google's search engine by being linked on other websites. The closer the relevancy of your website's content to the query's keywords, and the higher your credibility to Google's search engine, the higher up your business will appear on Google's SERP.
Taking SEO marketing strategies into consideration is an essential way of ensuring you have a well-rounded, relevant, and credible website. But it also requires a lot of keyword research and content creation via web pages, blogs, and online articles. While you might not have to pay Google to move up in their search rankings, you'll still have to pay someone to research keywords and write content. Gaining credibility in the eyes of Google's search engine also takes a lot of time. Not only will you need to create content on your website, but others will have to vouch for it with hyperlinks.
How Do I Start?
So, taking all of this into consideration, the best plan for most businesses is a combination of paid ads and SEO. If you want to drive potential customers to your website so they can purchase your goods and services, then you need a strong digital marketing strategy that not only gets you onto Google, but also helps you rise to the top of Google searches.
Running a business and managing your presence on Google is a lot to ask. Between your endless business to-do list and your personal life, you don't have time to ponder over SEO, PPC, and all the other elusive acronyms responsible for your website's presence on Google. Take the pressure off yourself by working with Cox Media Group. CMG is a digital media company that can handle all of your local and national digital marketing needs. CMG reaches approximately 52 million consumers weekly, and they can offer data-driven and transparent ways to drive business to your website and increase your bottom line. If you want more traffic and more customers through Google Ads, SEO campaigns, and more, click the button link below to be taken to CMG's website.
When getting your website to the top of Google seems impossible, CMG is in your corner with the tested and perfected tools to pull it off!
