What drug treatment center wouldn’t want to get to the top of google.com for competitive keywords like “drug treatment center” and “drug rehab services”?
There are two options for getting to the top of Google*. Pay Per Click Advertising or Local SEO/Traditional SEO.
*Buyer beware. No company can guarantee any kind of rankings for any keywords. Google explicitly says this in their Webmaster Guidelines.
For the purpose of this post, we are solely going to go over a checklist on ranking organically.
Ranking Checklist:
Ensure robots.txt allow bots to crawl your site
How to check: Using an advanced search query on google is the easiest way for non-technical users. On the search portion of google.com, type in site:mywebsite.com. Click on search, below are the results I get when I perform this advanced search query.
If you don’t see any results from your website, chances are your robots.txt file is blocking Googlebot from crawling the pages on your website.
How to fix: Get in contact with your web developer in getting this corrected.
Mobile Friendly
Is your website mobile friendly? We wrote a full post on this not to long ago and how important it is.
How to check: Use the Google Mobile-Friendly Test Tool
How to fix: If your website is not mobile friendly, you need a website redesign!
Title Tags
Title tags are one of the first things that a bot crawls on any given page. It is also the clickable part on google.com. The recommended format for title tags is: Main Keyword “|” Business Name.
Tips:
- The | (pipe) used in-between the keyword and business name is called the separator. You can use any of the following as separators: | : :: > –
- Main Keyword: When determining this, think about the overall purpose of the page this represents. The keyword should be a good first hint at what the page will be about.
- Business Name: Use your business name.
- Keep it short and sweet. Google will truncate your title tag if it exceeds 512px (55-60 characters)
- Each page on the website should have a unique title tag
Meta Descriptions
This is the snippet below the title tag that people can read before clicking on the result. This is your chance to stand out from the crowd. Limited to 156 characters, draw users in to want learn more. Each page should have a unique meta description.
Pro tip: Include your phone number in the description. It becomes clickable from a mobile result!
Unique Content
How many times have you heard this? If you copy content from another page and paste it as your own, Google will not rank that page. Think about your ideal customers and the information they are looking for. Write content for the user, not for a search engine.
User Experience
Have peers, friends, and family evaluate your website. The feedback they give you may give you some great insight and improving the user experience.
