If you have a New Zealand website and want it to rank on Google, or other search engines like Bing, Youtube, Yahoo and many others, for your keywords, then this post is for you!
It’s aimed at helping small business owners in New Zealand to rank their websites higher on Google. And filled with a few tips about how to get started, how to optimise your site, and what the best practices are.
Here’s the thing – there are hundreds of thousands of businesses in New Zealand (and many more worldwide) who want their website to show up on page one of Google’s results when people search for a related keyword. It takes time and money to gain these results, but it’s definitely possible if you follow the steps outlined in this article.
An important thing to note is that there are hundreds of strategies for SEO (search engine optimisation), so whether you have a business that’s new to the internet or one with an established presence, you should know how to rank for keywords and in turn, gain new customers from search engines. This will help you achieve your goals of marketing your business online.
In this article, I’m going to outline how to get started, what you can do, and what some of the best strategies are so that you can improve your ranking on Google for New Zealand terms.
Let’s get started!
What is search engine optimisation?
Search engine optimisation is a method of optimising your website to increase the number of people who find you, through search engines like Google. It comes in various forms. SEO can be on-page optimisation, which is optimising specific content and keywords, or off-page, which is focusing on building a link profile through social media and backlinks. It’s defined by Wikipedia as:
“Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines.[1] SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as “natural” or “organic” results) rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. Unpaid traffic may originate from different kinds of searches, including image search, video search, academic search,[2] news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, the computer-programmed algorithms that dictate search engine behaviour, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines, and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. SEO is performed because a website will receive more visitors from a search engine when websites rank higher on the search engine results page (SERP). These visitors can then potentially be converted into customers.” – Wikipedia
How to gain New Zealand rankings on Google for your keywords?
There are hundreds of different strategies for ranking well for a keyword or a list of keywords. You might want to choose the one that suits you best and then adapt it over time.
Google is paid huge amounts of money by advertisers to make sure that its algorithm shows people what they are looking for whenever they search on a Google site. For example, if you are a small business owner and you really want to use Google as your marketing tool, the first thing that you will have to do is learn the keywords that your audience is searching for, this is the first part of developing a good SEO strategy.
Once you have established the keywords that your audience is searching for, you will want to use a specific keyword tool to determine the volume of search traffic that has been made for these keywords and this will give you an idea of how many visitors you could potentially attract if your website is ranked in the first position, and therefore how many potential customers you could gain from being in that first spot.
Here are 6 steps to gain a better ranking for your website:
#1: Understand the types of keywords you want to rank for
One of the first steps you should take is to identify the type of content – in other words, what information people are likely looking for on your website. This will help you figure out which keywords to target and how to optimise your website so that it ranks well for these terms.
You should always want to target up to 10 keywords for each search query. As an example, if you’re trying to rank for “room cleaning” you would want the keywords below:
“cleaning”, “cleaning services”, “house cleaning”, “house cleaning service”, “cleaner”, “cheap cleaners” etc. You should always want to target up to 10 keywords for each search query. As an example, if you’re trying to rank for “room cleaning” you would want the keywords below: “cleaning”, “cleaning services”, “house cleaning”, “house cleaning service”, “cleaner”, “cheap cleaners” etc.
When it comes to keyword research, try to be as specific as possible, while still keeping your keywords broad enough that people are likely to search for them on Google. It’s best to do keyword research using a tool such as Google Adwords or SEMrush.
Here’s a list of few free and paid keyword research tools:
- Google Trends – Free
- Ahrefs Keyword Generator – Free & Paid
- Answer the Public – Free
- Keywords Everywhere – Paid
- Moz – Paid
- SEMrush – Paid
#2: Identify your competitors
Now that you’ve got a list of possible keywords, you should find out what other businesses are doing to rank on Google. You can use tools such as Moz or SEMrush to see what others are ranking for and see how they’re currently getting ranked. Once you’ve done this, you should start trying to match up your website’s content with the keywords that other sites have in their titles and descriptions.
Here’s how to do this:
Using Moz Pro, or a number of other tools, look for about 10 keywords you want your website to focus on. Write down the first five websites that show up on page one for the related keyword. Now, take each of these websites and see how they’re ranking. Look at their content and analyse what they’re doing well and what they’re not doing well. Make a note of this in your notebook or word document!
Pay particular attention to their title tag, meta description and URL structure. This will help you understand how to improve your own website with the key elements that can rank higher.
You should then repeat this process with each keyword. Set a time frame for this, and aim to have it done within a week. Once you’ve done this, you should create a list of keywords for each of these websites and try to match your website’s content up with their titles and descriptions as best as possible. Of course, don’t copy their titles or descriptions exactly, but try to use the same terms (e.g. “cleaning” “cleaning service” etc.)
#3: Create a keyword list and keyword matrix
Now we’ve talked about how to find your competitors, you should be able to create a list of keywords that you can use to help optimise your website. Repeat this process for each of the pages on your website. We recommend using Google’s Keyword Planner or SEMrush to help you find relevant keywords for any page on your site.
Once you’ve done this, make a spreadsheet and add each keyword to it. Then, under each keyword, make a note of its position on page 1 (the first page of Google results), the competition level and its average CPC (cost per click). You should be able to find this information in the keyword research tool you use.
#4: Create a link building strategy
By now, you should be prepared to start building links for your site. This can be an extremely time-consuming process, so it’s best to split it up into stages. Start by prioritising the content on your website that you want to focus on. Some of this content will naturally get links as a result of its excellent content, but you can also try to boost these by contacting industry specialists and bloggers and asking them if they’d like to share your content.
Next, you can use the link building process to your advantage. If you’re not getting any links for a particular page, then you should use that page to get links from sites that don’t typically link back to websites. You could do this by creating multiple pages on your site and linking them all together. When visitors arrive at the landing page from another page on your website, they’ll be more likely to click through to the other pages on your site if they’ve previously landed there from your website.
You can also ask individual bloggers or journalists to link back to you from their sites as a way of demonstrating to them that contributing content can benefit your site.
#5: Add social media buttons
Social media share buttons can appear on the side of your web page, or within a blog post. They’re an extremely effective way of helping drive traffic back to your website by having your content shared across multiple social media profiles and channels.
You should use a tool like BuzzSumo or Ahrefs to find out which websites are currently linking to you, and take note of the specific pages that they link on. You can then reach out to those people and ask them to share your content on social media. If you get any shares, you’ll see a spike in the number of people coming to your website via social media. You’ll also get more links to the specific article that is being shared on social media. This could have a positive impact on your overall search engine optimization.
#6 Write blogs
Writing blogs helps you to use content marketing to increase your search ranking, you can create campaigns around your specific products or services to help explain your process, features, benefits and anything that might be interesting to your audience. A well-written blog is a perfect way to get more business, an online platform can be a great way to market yourself and your business.
In addition to your blog, you can create videos that will not only help explain things but also create a lasting impression on anyone looking at your business online, if you explain something in a funny way or are entertaining then this can be an even better option for you.
When creating content marketing and blogging, you really need to think about how you want that information presented, some people would prefer to read and others will want to see videos, so make sure that there is something for all of them.
Wrapping Up
These are 6 actionable steps that you can use to increase the organic traffic to your website, these steps will help you grow your audience base and increase the number of people who visit your site and consume your content. A useful tool to measure the effectiveness of your SEO efforts is Google Analytics, which provides a wealth of information. Use this tool to track your online presence it provides some of the best possible information for your website and keyword searches on Google. If you would like some help to create your SEO campaign and increase your search engine rankings, then please get in touch.
Think Forward is a Digital Marketing and SEO agency based in Wellington. As an SEO agency, our team focus on the customer goals, and the outcomes they are looking to achieve with their business. Our SEO services range in price to accommodate all businesses, whether you’re at the first step or you’ve been doing this for years, we will create the right online marketing strategy to increase your organic search engine rankings, defining the right content, advertising, and platforms to achieve success.
