Getting your website recognized by the search engines is a long and complex process. It can be broken down into easier to understand categories.
Keyword research
The first order of business would be for you to decide what keywords you would like to be found under in the search engines. Make a list and enter them into the search engine to see what results it brings.
Site structure and content
A healthy site has a clearly defined structure that is easy to understand by search engine bots. Each page needs a title, headings, a healthy amount of text and metadata, which is a short paragraph about each page written specifically for the search engines. When writing the content on your website you want to make sure that you are using the same phrases that you have identified in your keyword research.
Web Links
The internet is a web of interconnected pages. A well designed website will have both internal links (links between different pages of your site) and external links to other websites. The external links help the search engine to place your site within a specific topic category.
The second important type are other websites linking back to your site. The more links pointing to your site, the more popular the site is, the higher it will rank. The backlinks are the most difficult to acquire because you need to convince someone else to put a link to your site on their website. Thankfully, there are a couple of shortcuts you can use – like having your site listed in business directories, or writing social media posts that include links to your website.
Foot Traffic
Not everyone is going to come to your website from the search engine. Chances are some people already know your site and will visit it directly. The more traffic you have to your site, the more popular it becomes, the higher it will rank. Advertising your website outside the online channels will also boost your SEO score.
Fresh content
Adding content to your site on a frequent basis, and updating the existing content both indicate to the search engine that your website is active and relevant. A variety of content can also attract a larger number of visitors. Creating new pages or blog posts can be time consuming or intimidating but it is well worth your time.
Monitoring
Search Engine optimization is a process that can take years. Thankfully, there are great tools that allow you to monitor the progress like the Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Checking both tools on a regular basis will give an indication of the amount of traffic, the most popular search engine entities, and the most visited pages. Hopefully you will see your site rise in popularity overtime.