What Is SEO Visibility, and How Can You Improve It?

What is SEO visibility?

SEO visibility is a measure of how visible your website is in Google — that is, how easy it is for people to find your website in Google search results.

Everybody wants to feel seen. But when it comes to your company’s presence online, it’s not just a want — it’s a necessity. If no one finds your business online, no one will buy from you. It’s as simple as that.

That’s why search engine optimization (SEO) is such an important marketing strategy. It enables you to get your website ranking in search results where people can find it. In fact, SEO visibility is one of the most important metrics for your company.

But hold on — what is SEO visibility, exactly? Well, that’s just what we’ll be talking about on this page. Below, we’ll cover the following topics:

• What is SEO visibility?
• How can you find out your search engine visibility?
• What determines your search visibility?
• How to increase your visibility in search results

Keep reading to find out more. Then, be sure to subscribe to Revenue Weekly — our email newsletter — for more helpful digital marketing tips!

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What is SEO visibility?

SEO visibility — also referred to as search visibility or search engine visibility — is a measure of how likely users are to see your website in Google search results. Some marketers measure it by how many clicks you earn. Usually, though, it’s about how many people see your site, not how many of them click on it.

How can you find out your search engine visibility?

Search visibility isn’t always a hard, measurable metric. And even when it is, it’s subjective, so there are different ways of measuring it, including:

• Impressions
• Clicks
• Rankings
• And more!

Plus, you can measure the visibility of specific pages in specific searches, or you can measure your whole website’s visibility.

For all those reasons, I can’t really hand you a specific formula for calculating your visibility in search results. Having said that, if it’s really important to you to put a hard number down for this metric, there are several different tools you can use. Semrush, for example, has a system it uses to calculate your search visibility. You can access that system through the tool.

What determines your search visibility?

Search visibility is directly tied to rankings. Your site is only visible for a given keyword if it ranks for that term. And the higher it ranks, the more visible it is.

Because of that, the factors that affect your visibility are the same factors that affect your search engine rankings. Google considers a ton of ranking factors, and not all of them are even officially confirmed, so it’s impossible to give you a comprehensive list of every factor that affects your visibility. 

That said, some of the biggest ones include:

• Mobile-friendliness
• Backlinks
• Website security
• Search intent
• And lots more!

Basically, the more you optimize your website for SEO, the more your search visibility will improve.

How to increase your visibility in search results

Naturally, you want your SEO visibility to be as high as possible. So, what can you do to increase it?

As we just established, there are a ton of factors that contribute to your visibility. But if you’re looking to make some large strides toward improving your visibility, we have a few tips you should definitely follow. Those tips include:

1. Target long-tail keywords
2. Use responsive design
3. Optimize your page speeds
4. Earn reputable backlinks

Keep reading to find out more about each.

1. Target long-tail keywords

If you’re at all familiar with SEO, you know that one of the most fundamental steps involved in it is keyword research and integration. By targeting specific keywords on your website, you can signal to Google that you should rank for those terms.

But it’s important to target the right keywords. More specifically, you should try to target long-tail keywords, which are those that are several words long. Why target these keywords? Because they’re more specific, which means they reach a more precise audience and come with less competition in search results.

For example, compare the search results for the short-tail keyword “accounting”…

… with the results for the long-tail keyword “accounting services in ann arbor michigan.”

As you can see, the keyword “accounting” is way too vague, and the top search results are all informational. But the second keyword is way more specific, so we see that some accounting firms made it into the top few results.

Since long-tail keywords are more specific, that means it’s a lot easier to rank high for those keywords, increasing your search visibility.

2. Use responsive design

When Google ranks pages, it uses something called mobile-first indexing. That means it ranks pages based on their mobile versions — even in searches made on a desktop computer. So, if you want your site to have any chance at ranking in search results, you need your site to be mobile-friendly.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to use responsive design. That’s a type of web design where the elements on your page will rearrange themselves to fit the screen where they appear. So, a desktop version of a website will look slightly different from a mobile version.

Having a mobile-friendly site will help you rank higher, increasing your search visibility. Plus, it’ll lead to more clicks.

3. Optimize your page speeds

Another vital contributor to your rankings is your page speeds. If your site takes forever to load, no one will want to visit it. As a result, Google will rank it a lot lower. In fact, Core Web Vitals — a collection of metrics related to page load times — are one of the most important ranking factors.

So, how can you help your pages load faster? There are a few different things you can do, including:

• Compressing images
• Caching web pages
• Minifying code
• Limiting redirects

Each of these things will speed up your pages and boost your rankings, leading to an increase in search engine visibility.

4. Earn reputable backlinks

Finally, you should be sure to earn backlinks to your web content. If you don’t know what those are, they’re links that lead from other websites to your content. Importantly, though, don’t just earn backlinks from any website. You want to earn them from reputable sites in your industry.

Why earn backlinks? Because Google loves them! When a reputable site links to you, Google assumes that your site is reputable as well, so it ranks it higher. That gives you a ton more search visibility.

So, how do you earn backlinks? Well, the simplest way to do it directly is to visit reputable sites in your industry and look for broken or missing links. When you find some, contact the site owners and recommend that they replace them with fresh links to relevant pages on your site.

Independent research from Clutch has named WebFX the

top SEO company in the United States.

Clutch has personally interviewed more than 250 WebFX clients to discuss their experience partnering with us.

Read More Clutch Reviews

Let WebFX help you drive up your SEO visibility

Following the steps above is a good start, but there’s a lot more that you can do to improve your SEO visibility — especially if you partner with a professional SEO agency like WebFX. We have over 28 years of experience with SEO, so trust us — we know what we’re doing.

With our SEO services, your visibility will increase significantly, leading to more leads and revenue for your business. If you’re interested in partnering with us, be sure to give us a call at 888-601-5359 or contact us online today!