It’s no secret that Google, in particular, the first page, gets a large number of visitors every day. The same cannot be said for the second page.
This means that every single business is striving for that first-page position, tweaking their strategies to improve their Google ranking. The obvious thing to do is have good search engine optimization (SEO), but many fail to realize that it also takes time, resourcefulness, and above all creativity. The Google algorithm is always evolving; therefore we all need to stay on our feet.
So what are some of the steps you can take to raise the position of your site in the search engine results page (SERP)? Let’s have a look at some based around on-page SEO, its rules, and functional optimization.
Step 1: Understand the rankings
Considering the constant changes to the Google algorithm, roughly five hundred per year, in fact, long-term success comes down to a basic understanding of the core rules. Google will always announce significant updates, but it’s the small changes that can get you!
The first thing to remember is that Google’s goal is only to rank the best results. Their actual mission statement is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
There are plenty of resources to help you keep across the various algorithm changes, and this will lead you to a better understanding of how things rank, the next part is to understand your ranking.
A big part of step one is understanding where you currently sit, even in you are a new site. There are ways to check your site’s keyword rank based on the specific keywords you’ve been using in your page content. You’ll also want to check your site speed, as slow sites will unquestionably hurt your ranking.
You can also assess the overall health of your site and can even break it down to see if any specific algorithm updates have hurt you.
Step 2: Fix issues and track metrics
When you understand your ranking, you’ll need to examine your site for penalties and track important metrics. This is crucial as working on an unhealthy site is like running on the spot.
The first place to start is with bad links as they will hurt your ranking. The key here is that linking should be natural (as should your use of keywords), so identify and remove any unhealthy links first. Once you have identified the bad links, keep a list which you can refer to, to avoid having to rerun this exercise.
You also need to ensure that no unhealthy or unnatural links are coming from another site that is linking to you. This tutorial can help with link removal; there is also the Google disavow links tool.
Another thing to keep in mind and avoid is over-optimization, to do this, avoid excessive keyword-rich anchor text and irrelevant links. Keep everything relevant to your keywords, and by extension your products and services.
Next, you need to track and measure metrics relevant to your site. Metrics will help you find out what other factors you need to improve. You should assess:
* Organic traffic – how many visitors find your site via Google
* Organic traffic conversions – the keywords that generate traffic for you
* Keyword ranking for commercial keywords – learn the difference between commercial and informational keywords
From here you can set up an SEO dashboard to help you track the metrics.
Step 3: Ensure mobile optimization
The number of people who search on a mobile device is large and growing, and it’s already taken over the desktop search.
Google has explicitly said that content which is not easily accessible via the mobile search results may not rank as high. There is an easy way to test how mobile-friendly site is, and you can also use Google’s Search Console which offers a Mobile Usability Report.
If it turns out your site isn’t as mobile-friendly as you need there are ways to rectify this. Depending on the platform your site is built with, you can often get a mobile plugin, just ensure that your site developer uses responsive web design best practices, to keep full functionality.
Mobile is particularly important when it comes to local search as users are often searching with their device while on the move. Your Google My Business profile will need to be up-to-date and very comprehensive to help you in this category.
Step 4: Keywords and link building
The final step focuses on the all-important keywords and links, the best ways to improve on-page SEO. Keyword research is crucial to your marketing strategy, and you need to understand how it works.
First, find the keywords that your preferred customers are using to find your site. Google’s Keyword Planner is an excellent tool to help with this. Keyword research gives you information about your target audience, which will then guide your copy, tailoring your content to things that will rank well in the Google search results. However, it has to be natural! Keyword stuffing is a big no!
It’s helpful to figure out the buyer personas and customer life-cycle of your target audience so that you understand what motivates them. Then, provide relevant page content that will help you increase your Google ranking.
If you know your audience demographics, and user intent, this will help with your keyword research. Your goal should be to educate and build interest with your audience before going in for the sale. It’s also a good idea to keep an eye on your competition, especially if they are ranking higher than you. Look at their strategies and see if you can apply something similar to yours.
Once you understand the keywords you can:
* Optimize your title tags – make sure they are descriptive and catered to your targeted keywords.
* Create a search engine sitemap -this explains the organization of your site content to the search engine
* Use your keywords to create great content
Always remember that making sure your content is high quality and useful is one thing, but it should also target a specific group of people. Also, always have a call-to-action!
The other half of steadying your SEO is link building. Anchor text linking are links that appear within the content, much like the ones throughout this piece. This strategy is usually for the ranking of a particular keyword, you’ll use your target keyword as anchor text, but you should always mix it up with generic keywords as well.
You can also use images to build links by typing the keyword in the “Alt Text” box.
It’s also important to remember that other people’s “opinions” of you online are more important than your own when it comes to Google. Editorial links and relevant resource posts other sites will improve the rank of your pages.
The critical thing to remember is to release quality content, stick with that as one of your main focuses and the rest should follow naturally!
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