What are you doing if your website isn’t on the first page of Google? You’re probably wondering how to get it there. There are some interesting statistics as to why you should be wondering how to get there:
- The first search result gets 27.6% of all clicks.
- 57.8% of the world’s web traffic comes from Google organic search.
- 49% of marketers think organic search has the best ROI
There are more we could give you, but the question is, how do you get there? A lot of people focus on SEO alone, but there’s so much more to it than that – you need content people want to read, people linking to your website that people will actually see, and the best VPS to prevent downtime. It’s a question of taking the correct steps so Google thinks your website is rank-worthy.
Below, we’ll give you 5 of the most important steps you can take to make your website rank-worthy (we can’t promise first-page results).
On-Page SEO
SEO is the main focus – search engine optimization. You’ve got on-page and off-page SEO, and everyone always jumps to focus on off-page. In a nutshell, on-page SEO covers everything you can do on a webpage.
This includes changing the website design features like titles, meta tags, headers, and the URL structure for search engine optimization.
- Keyword Research: First, you should determine the keywords you would want to target that are related to your niche. Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs can give you relevant keywords with a large monthly search volume and low competition.
- Title tags and meta descriptions: Of all the ranking factors, title tags are arguably the most significant but people underestimate them. Use a distinct and logically structured, keyword-optimized title on every page.
- Internal Linking: Connect the relevant pages to enhance the user experience and make sense of the site to search engines. Make your website flow from within.
- Image Optimization: Everyone always forgets about image optimization. Compress images, use ALT tags, use image sitemaps, etc.
- Mobile Responsiveness: With Google’s move to mobile-first indexing, making your website mobile responsive is a must.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO is the one that everyone is interested in. Yes, on-page matters, but we can’t deny that off-page is where the ranking magic happens. Off-page SEO is everything away from your website but still relates to it.
- Backlink Building: Backlinks are one of Google’s biggest ranking factors even if SEOs tell you it isn’t. 93.8% of link builders will tell you link quality is better than quantity and 79.7% will tell you it’s the most essential part of their SEO strategy. Still, only 2.2% of content gets links from more than one site.
- Guest Posting: Guest posting is often a part of link building, helping to put your brand in front of a different audience, and generating natural backlinks.
- Social Signals: This is a relatively new one – generating links through social media is effective, but not necessarily one of the strongest. Still, making posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, would help promote your brand.
- Influencer Marketing: Using influencers is also relatively new to SEO. Still, like social media, it helps to have an effective content promotion strategy using influencers who will increase your brand exposure and create natural backlinks.
- Online Reviews: Local SEO is so effective – one way to secure that is with the positive reviews left on Google My Business, TrustPilot, Yelp, etc.
Valuable Content
Google PageRank will tell you valuable content is more essential than anything else – we’ll tell you it goes hand in hand with on and off-page SEO. You have to create valuable content people actually want to read, link to, and that Google thinks is rank-worthy.
- Content Relevancy: Create content that meets the interests and questions of your target audience. If you are targeting specific keywords, for example, ensure your content is relevant to the listed search intent, but not with a keyword overload inside the content.
- Content-Length and Depth: Long-form content has a better probability of receiving natural backlinks. The average length of content ranking in the top 10 Google search results is 1,400+ words.
- Fresh Content: Update your blog and content every once in a while. Preferably, you should upload relevant, valuable content weekly to your blog. Google is a fan of new information.
- Engagement Metrics: Google looks at the interaction a person makes with the contents of your site. If a user spends a significant amount of time on the site, clicks through several pages, and does not return to Google, you’ll rank better – that happens with engaging content.
- Multimedia Integration: Give them videos, infographics, graphs, and images to supplement the text and raise engagement levels.
Website Usability and Relevance
An intuitive design that enables easy site navigation is essential to Google. Feedback on speed, the responsiveness of the site, and the architecture of the page contribute significantly to the SEO scoring.
- Page Speed: People expect a webpage to load in under 2 seconds. Systems like Google PageSpeed Insights make it very easy to analyze and report the performance of a website. Downtime is an absolute no-go! Good hosting is essential.
- User-Friendly Navigation: Make it so that those who visit your site will not struggle to find information with good navigation menus.
- Bounce Rate and Dwell Time: Google’s systems are programmed to know how long people stay on your page (dwell time) and if they just came, looked around, and went (bounce). Dwell time will be higher with great content.
- Mobile Usability: Make your website compatible with mobile use by making it responsive to all devices.
While SEO can be complex, breaking it down into these five key steps can simplify the process and give your website a solid foundation to rise through the ranks. By consistently following these steps, you’ll improve your chances of climbing to that coveted first page on Google. Are cyber security risks out of control?
