It’s a dream come true for businesses that require a strong internet presence (which, let’s face it, is pretty much everyone these days). Since its inception, Google has evolved, and it now uses sophisticated algorithms to evaluate online sites. If your pages meet the ranking factors and outperform the competition, you’ll be on your way to a top spot in the SERPs.
Whether you’re a university, a legal firm, or a corporation in any other industry, your search result rankings have a significant impact on your website traffic and revenue.
It’s no surprise that placing your website on the first page of Google might be challenging with so many websites and prospective competitors out there. Fortunately, regardless of what industry your firm is in, there are a lot of overlapping SEO methods you can use to rank higher on Google and get more visitors to your page.
On-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO, and SEO-optimized content are all examples of these tactics. We’ve given the specifics of each technique below to assist you in putting them into action.
On-page SEO refers to the process of optimizing individual web pages to improve user experience and target specific keywords. Other strategies include changing title tags, creating appealing meta descriptions, and optimizing photos.
Businesses frequently look for answers within complicated guides that explain how to use on-page SEO to get your website to the top of Google. In reality, success can be as simple as paying attention to your customers’ needs. The easier it is for people to read your website’s content and find the information they’re looking for, the more likely they are to stay on and return to your website. The user experience of your website is also something that search engines like Google consider when determining page rankings. If your website is difficult to navigate and has a high click-through rate, Google will penalize your company’s SERP rankings.
The more relevant your web content is, the more likely it will be accessed, shared, and valued by your audience. This, in turn, has a positive long-term impact on your company’s bottom line, drives more revenue to your business, and aids in getting your website to the top of Google search results.
So how can you improve navigation on your website and make it more user-friendly? We recommend evaluating each component through the eyes of an information seeker. Is your site’s content comprehensive, and does each page load quickly? Is there a clear call to action on each page?
With mobile accounting for 52 percent of all web searches in 2018, we also recommend optimizing your website for mobile devices. Search engines have been emphasizing the mobile-friendliness of websites, and if you want your website to appear at the top of Google searches, you must structure it accordingly.
Keyword stuffing is a thing of the past. Previously, webmasters would boost their Google rankings by including as many instances of their targeted keywords as possible within each piece of content. Websites caught keyword stuffing are penalized in the same way that students who plagiarize papers to get a higher grade are. Unlike the students, however, this penalty does not only affect the grade for that specific page.
Search Engine Optimization also has a long-term impact on your entire website’s ability to rank. This is because search engines such as Google give higher rankings to websites that demonstrate their usefulness and expertise. Keyword stuffing has the opposite effect; it makes your website appear spammy and as if it is attempting to defraud the system.
Your company and website would benefit more from providing value through your web pages. Of course, this does not preclude you from targeting specific keywords on each page. They only need to appear naturally in your content. Long-tail keywords and keyword synonyms can assist you in accomplishing this.
The accessibility of your website to meta robots and website crawlers is another aspect of on-page SEO. Search engine bots use crawling to categorize the content on your website. If you prevent them from doing so, you will be unable to appear in SERPs. To avoid this, ensure that your meta robots tag allows for crawling. Ensure that any URLs you want to rank for are in your sitemap and are not blocked in your robots.txt file.
If you want to get your website to the top of Google, you should also work on improving its external reputation. Simply put, search engines give more weight and higher rankings to websites that are willing to link to them. Different types of links carry different weights in terms of ranking potential, but they all contribute to the authority of your domain. To obtain these links for a website, link building, guest blogging, skyscraper writing, and other strategies can be used.
The end goal of all of these techniques is to show Google that your website is the go-to resource for everything related to your brand. Here’s a breakdown of what each one entails.
More than 200 ranking factors are considered when determining your search engine ranking, but the number of referring domains to your website plays a significant role. As previously stated, websites that link to yours pass credibility along. This credibility, or “link juice,” as it is commonly referred to, is determined by the ability of the referring domain to meet several criteria. These criteria necessitate authoritative, trustworthy, relevant, and high-quality link sources. The more closely a website matches these criteria, the more link juice they will pass to your website.
If you can get a large number of authoritative domains to link to your website, you’ll be one step closer to having your company’s name appear on Google’s coveted first page. We recommend using link-building tools to examine your competitors’ backlink profiles and contacting the webmasters of those websites to get started with link building. Web-masters are more likely to link to your site if a domain is willing to link to one of your competitors. Websites ending in.GOV,.EDU, and.ORG currently pass on the most link juice of any other websites. They are the ultimate prize in the world of off-page SEO.
Guest blogging is similar to link building. To be successful with this method, you must ensure that the content you submit is of high quality. Consider guest blogging, as well as all off-page SEO tactics, to be a value exchange. Web-masters will allow you to place a link to your website on one of their pages in exchange for a well-written, well-researched, authoritative piece of content. If the situation isn’t a win-win for both websites, the post is unlikely to be accepted.
The final off-page SEO strategy we recommend, if you want to get your website to the top of Google, is skyscraper writing. This method gets its name from the idea that when people see a skyscraper, they naturally wonder how tall the tallest building is, rather than how tall the second or even eighth tallest building is. Simply put, people want the best of everything. If you want your website to rank higher on Google, you must give them the best.
In writing, the skyscraper method entails taking the best content ranking for a specific topic or keyword and improving on it. Market it to your potential customers once you’ve expanded and improved on the pre-existing content. To be the best on Google, you must create content that outperforms the competition and get websites to link to it. It’s as simple as that.
Method #7: Having a Fast Website is a Good Tactic.
Technical SEO factors to consider include site speed, image optimization, and page errors.
Have you ever Googled a question only to have the result you clicked on to take an eternity to load? This is probably not something you want to go through, and neither do your potential customers or students. This is why site speed, both on mobile and desktop, is such an important factor in your ability to rank in search results. People will leave your website if it takes too long to load, and a high click-through rate will harm your credibility. Make the mistake of having a slow website.
Technical SEO is at the back end of a website’s ranking potential. This technique is similar to On-page SEO tactics and user experience in that it helps keep your website running smoothly. It is also critical to the success of your search engine because it allows crawlers and users to easily get the information.
Sarah Wallace