Hyde Park, Kingston, Woodstock, Poughkeepsie, Newburgh, website and mobile design.

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An organized method to determine and track your standing in Google searches
January 19, 2021

In a previous article I talked about some of the basics of making your website found in Google. Now I will describe a specific technique I use to apply some science to this art.

The first step in determining how well your site is doing in Google searches is to find out exactly that... How well does your site do in Google searches.

  1. Identify 3-5 keyword phrases that you want to rank well in google. These can be things like “securities fraud”, “Hudson Valley bass player”, whatever your particular skills are. Write down a list of 3-5 of these phrases, ranked in order of importance to you. I limit the list at about 5 because trying to optimize your website for more than 5-7 keyword phrases starts making your site too general.
  2. Go to Google.com and try each phrase and see where your website lands in the search results. This is simple… just enter each phrase in the search box in google, then keep looking through the search results that google gives you until you find your website. If you don’t find your site in the first 4 pages of search results, stop. No use looking in page 5 and beyond of the search results, because people who will search for you in Google just don’t look that far down in the search results.
  3. Write down where you saw your site in the search results for each keyword phrase.

I do this for several of my clients. You should end up with data that looks like this

This is step 1, to determine where you really stand, and it serves as a baseline to measure the effects of changes made to your website in the future. Write down this data, and the date.

Using this data, now you can identify which keyword phrases need improvement. Have your web developer make sure those phrases are added to the text on your website. For example, if the phrase "Saugerties Website designer" ranked low in the search results, then make sure that exact phrase "Saugerties Website Designer" is used several times on your website. These phrases can also be added to “Alt” tags for images, and several other hidden areas that your web designer will know about.

Wait a week or so to make sure Google has indexed your entire site with those new changes, then try steps 1-3 above again. Did your rankings improve for certain keywords? If so, great, you're on the right track. If not, have your web designer add or tweak keywords in your website text, and try again.  

Once you are satisfied, give the changes a rest and repeat steps 1-3 every six months or so to see if your Google rankings change, and if you need to change the text on your website again.

Steve Wehr