Top Google rankings are important for online business success.
There is no magic button that ranks your site #1 without fail. It takes resourcefulness, dedication, persistence, and creativity. This is especially true because of the constantly changing nature of Google’s algorithm.
However, there are few steps you can take to soar to the top of a search engine results page.
Need to Know the Google Algorithm
Google constantly changes its algorithm. Moz estimates there are 500 to 600 Google algorithm changes per year. While Google used to share major update announcements, the exact inner workings of the algorithm are still unknown. After all, if everyone knew exactly how to rank in the first position without penalties, Google wouldn’t succeed in ranking only the best results. Anyone could hack their way to the top without putting in the work.
So, how are we supposed to keep track of all these Google updates?
There are some great resources to help. Moz’s Google Algorithm Change History is an awesome database that organizes updates chronologically. Check out Google Webmaster Central, too.
Check Your Current Google Ranking
To improve your Google ranking, you need to know where you stand. This is true even for new sites. There are several tools to help. Use Ubersuggest to Check Your Site’s Keyword Rank
If you’ve been targeting specific keywords in page content, use my tool Ubersuggest to assess your rank.
-Check Your Site Speed
Next, it’s important to check site speed, as this is still an important Google ranking factor.
If your site is slow, you have little chance of a high search position. It will affect your ability to convert and sell new customers, too. It’s important to run your own site speed test to figure out how to improve Google rankings.
-Check the page load time
You should aim for under 2 seconds for a really fast site and under one second for mobile devices. Remember, a load time of more than a few seconds could cause you to lose a significant amount of site traffic.
-Check Your Site’s Health
After looking at keyword search engine rank and site speed, assess the overall health of your site before you start to optimize.
There are few great tools like Domain Health Report tool to check for major issues in five different categories: general site problems, blacklist, mail server, web server, and DNS.
If you want to check if you’ve been penalized by one of the major algorithm updates, check out FE International’s Website Penalty Indicator tool.
If you do have a manual penalty, fix the issue, then submit a reconsideration request with Google.
Track and Measure the Right SEO Metrics
Next, it’s time to track some vital metrics of your site to find out what other factors you need to improve. Here are the most important metrics to assess.
-Organic Traffic
It’s important to know how visitors find your site via Google. In the past, organic search drove most website visitors, crushing non-organic channels like paid search and social media.
Today, social media, email, and paid ads often lead the pack in driving organic traffic — but that can vary drastically by industry.
To find out how many visitors reach your site, log in to your Google Analytics account and check out the acquisition channels report.
-Organic Traffic Conversions
You can do this with Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools). It can tell you how many clicks you get for certain keywords in organic search results.
-Keyword Ranking for Transactional Keywords
To improve your search engine rankings and make money, you need to understand the difference between commercial and informational keywords to improve Google rankings.
If all of your keywords are informational, you will still generate organic traffic, but it may be difficult to convert those visitors to buyers or people who share on social media.
-Set Up An SEO Dashboard to Track These Metrics
I recommend that you set up an SEO dashboard so that you can track all of the important metrics at any time.
Here’s how to set one up in Google Analytics.
On-Page SEO
Now it’s time to make meaningful on-page SEO changes. Examples:
-Optimize Title Tags
Title tags are still a big part of determining how your site will perform.
Make sure every title tag is descriptive, unique, and catered to your targeted keywords.
Avoid using the same keywords and title tags over and over. This way, you’ll diversify your opportunities while avoiding cannibalizing your own efforts.
Use pipes ( | ) and dashes ( – ) between terms to maximize your real estate.
Avoid ALL CAPS titles.
Never keep default title tags like “Product Page” or “Home.” They trigger Google into thinking you have duplicate content, and they’re also not very convincing to users who are looking for specific information.
Put the most important and unique keywords first.
Don’t overstuff your keywords. Google increasingly values relevant, contextual, and natural strings over mechanical or forced keyword phrases.
Put your potential visitors before Google – title tags can make-or-break traffic and conversions.
-Meta Descriptions
While meta descriptions have negligible (if any) impact on your rankings, they still serve the important purpose of helping to determine your search snippet and adding an extra factor of uniqueness. This in turn can influence your click-through rate (CTR) from SERPs.
-Create a Sitemap to Improve Google Rankings
A sitemap tells search engines about the organization of your site’s content.
That way, when Googlebot reads the file, it can more intelligently crawl your content. This helps make it more readily available for ranking on SERPs.
Sitemaps also provide valuable metadata about pages on your site like when they were last updated, how often you make changes, and how the page relates to other pages on your site.
Use Keywords to Create Better Content
Optimize for informational keywords and improve your search ranking by writing resourceful and detailed content while supplementing it with descriptive meta descriptions and title tags.
This process attracts raving fans, gets your content shared on social media platforms, and garners relevant and high-authority links naturally. Aim to include newer stats — less than three years old is ideal. You can even micro-target content. For example, if blogger experiments with niche marketing, take it a step further and try niche marketing with an aged domain name, then write it up.
-Use Storytelling
Stories can captivate your audience, evoke emotions, and improve your conversion rate.
-Infuse Your Own Experiences: It’s called a story for a good reason. Use your own experiences (whether good or bad) as part of the message. No fakery allowed!
-Add a Call-to-Action (CTA): Every story must have an ending. Once you capture your readers’ attention, they expect you to share the solution. After all, your story is supposed to solve a problem, not nurture it.
Build Links the Right Way
You need to build links the right way and improve Google rankings.
Here are some of the ways to do that and the types of links that you need.
-Anchor text linking (in-text links): Anchor text links are simple links that appear within the content.
-Internal Links: External links (that is links from other sites to yours) are important, but internal links are also important. Make sure to link to important internal pages using optimized anchor text when it makes sense.
-Editorial Links: Creating useful content and sharing it through social media naturally results in valuable inbound links.
Get Active on Social Media
Search engines like Google try to take into account as much information as possible about your website. They use it to determine the quality of your website and thus where they should place you when someone searches regarding a topic within your niche.
Social media offers 4.8 billion social media users worldwide. That’s a lot of traffic potential which can help in improving your search ranking.
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