How do you rank your website in Google?
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There are hundreds of ways to go about this. So here is the checklist for you, this checklist is meant as an SEO framework, and it doesn’t cover every scenario in detail, but instead gives you a basic overview on how to rank a website from start to finish, so you can build your process.
1. Working Smarter, Not Harder
We don’t want to rank for a single keyword, we want to rank for hundreds or thousands of keywords at the same time. We can do this with the same amount of work, by working smarter and not harder. It all starts with keyword research. Choosing the right or wrong keywords to target at this stage can predict our entire probability of success. Instead of ranking a single keyword, let’s start with a keyword seed that grows into a theme.
2. E-A-T Your Authority
Google uses several ranking signals to determine a website’s authority and trustworthiness. Many of these standards are not easy to control when creating your content. These trust and authority signals are certainly within your control, including the editorial standards of your writing. For this reason, it’s good to see the questions Google has published for website owners about its Panda algorithms and E-A-T guidelines.
3. The 50/50 Rule Of Link Building
Links are a powerful ranking factor. If you want to rank, you almost certainly need links, but you have to know the rules. In fact, there are two 50/50 rules of link building:
- Assume Google ignores 50% of your links, and only 50% of your links are good. Google will ignore or devalue links for many reasons like irrelevance, manipulation, disavowed, penalized domain, and many more.
- When building link-worthy content, spend 50% of your time creating the actual content itself and 50%of your time promoting it.
Link building is an active endeavor. Some types of content naturally earn links, but too many people create content and falsely believe the content is going to do all the work for them.
4. Leverage The Competition
No matter how smart you are, your competitors have already stumbled across which keywords are most lucrative.
Instead of finding these lucrative keywords yourself through the long process of trial and error, it’s 1000 times easier to take advantage of your competitor’s intelligence. You just have to
- Find the URL of your competitors that already rank for your target keyword.
- Find all other related keywords that URL also ranks for in Google.
These other related keywords are gold. Unfortunately, Google won’t tell your competitor’s ranking directly, but some 3rd party SEO tools do. Making the work much easier.
5. Make It Fast, Make it Sing
Aside from the content itself, how the user experiences your page can hugely influence rankings as well. Google calls these official ranking factors page experience signals and includes Core Web Vitals, mobile-friendliness, safe browsing, HTTPS. But understand that having these qualities won’t give you a big boost, they are just the cost of admission. Having a mobile-friendly website is almost a requirement, and aggressive pop-ups will put your rankings at risk.
The one exception to this is speed. While website speed is admittedly only a minor ranking factor for most sites, it can have a big effect on several other factors and the user experience itself.
6. Schema All The Things
We would like to give schema mark up its own callout. If the content is king, then the schema is certainly the crown price of on-page SEO. Schema, while it doesn’t appear on the page for the user, is important for two very significant reasons:
- As additional content, it can help Google understand your page, thereby giving you a potential ranking boost in certain situations.
- Schema can help you win a variety of rich snippets, further boosting your CTR.
To be clear, the schema itself is not a ranking factor for Google. This means schema can help you to rank, but you shouldn’t expect a boost of rankings. Think of it as additional content that search engines can read, that also help it understand what your content is about. As a minimum, you should include standard schemas like Article and Local Business, but even more, you should consider schema to help you earn your site rich snippets like event, FAQ, how-to, breadcrumb, video, and many more.
Therefore, many other experienced SEOs have their processes for ranking for desired keywords. Choose carefully whom you listen to, and seek out their advice wherever necessary. It is very important to identify your sweet spots for success, outrank the competition and prioritize by the metrics that matter.
Key SEO Tips to Boost Your Site's SERP Results
Increasing SERP results is a very effective way to attract visitors to your site. This boost in traffic directly results in the increased visibility associated with increased placement on SERPs.
Well, there are many ways to boost your search results and increase the number of visitors to your site, but most require a lot of time and research. The following tips will help you improve your visibility on SERPs:
Use Original Images
When it comes to SEO, the original image is always good. There are two reasons for this:
Firstly, the image you used should be content-related. If they are not, search engines will pay less attention to your site and so won’t be beneficial.
Secondly, try to use keywords in the names of your images. Search engines will consider these, and you’ll get a higher rank if they match with popular SERP queries.
You will need to have source tags on the images linked to your site. The best way of doing this is by inserting alt tags and placing a keyword there, so Google can easily see what’s on the image.
Use Long Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are a great way to up your search results. They are particular and relevant phrases that describe what you’re trying to target.
Here’s an example:
Suppose you are selling the new iPhone 12, and we want to improve our visibility on Google. One of our keywords is “iPhone 12 Price”. This keyword seems simple enough, but we know that we’re not getting the results we need with this long-tail keyword. Our competition for this keyword receives more traffic than us, and it doesn’t make sense considering how easy it is to target keywords like this.
Instead of using “iPhone 12 Price,” we change the keyword to “Cheapest iPhone 12 Deals Online.” Now, our competition is still getting traffic for this keyword, but according to Google Trends, “Cheapest iPhone 12 Deals Online” has a more extensive search volume than the first keyword.
That means we’re more likely to get results with this new long-tail keyword. We’re ranking higher on SERPs because our competition isn’t getting as much traffic for this keyword, and we’re able to capture all of it!
Quality Content
Quality content has always been important for SEO. If you want to be found in Google’s EDU SERPs, you need to improve your content by providing unique information with excellent references.
It is imperative to put relevant content for Google to rank you high! Therefore, always mix long-tail keywords and your primary keyword throughout the content when writing blog posts or articles. This way, Google will see that your post is relevant to what you are trying to rank for.
For example, when writing an article about making a social media calendar, keywords like “social media content calendar” and phrases like “how to create a social media calendar” would be ideal.
Get Social
The final step is to share your articles on social media to increase engagement. First, make a Twitter page for your business and use a tool like Hootsuite to pre-schedule social media posts so you don’t have to spend all day tweeting. Take full advantage of social media since it’s all about sharing. Tweet out your blog posts and share your content on Facebook too.
Following the steps above, you will see an improvement in Google’s rankings. But don’t forget, it’s a long and complex process, and working with a consistent strategy that is flexible to the changing algorithms within Google is your best bet to see desired results, increased visibility, and improved conversions!
5 Reasons Your Website Needs SEO Infographic
