How to rank your website on Google

Most of a website's traffic comes from search engines, and the overwhelming majority of those searches happen on Google. Ranking well is therefore the single biggest lever on how many people find you. You can buy your way to the top of the page with advertising, but there are cheaper alternatives and, better still, more durable ones. Organic ranking pays off substantially provided the strategy behind it is right.

1. Publish content worth reading

The first requirement is genuinely useful content, focused on the product or service you want to sell rather than on generalities. This takes sustained effort, which is why many businesses hand the content over to an agency rather than let it lapse after two months.

2. Use the right keywords in the right places

Research which terms your audience actually searches for, then use them where they carry weight: the page title, the headings, the first paragraph and the image descriptions. Stuffing them everywhere else achieves nothing and has not worked for over a decade.

3. Keep the site technically sound

Fast loading, working on phones, no broken links, a sensible URL structure. None of this will rank you on its own, but any of it missing will hold you back.

4. Earn links from relevant sites

Links remain one of the strongest signals of authority. They come from being worth citing: original data, a genuinely useful guide, coverage in your trade press.

5. Be patient and keep measuring

Ranking is a compounding process, not a switch. Track which terms bring people in and which pages convert, and keep going past the point where the graph looks flat.