You have a beautifully designed website with great content to share, but are people finding you and visiting the site? Even with the rise of social media, organic search is still a crucial website traffic driver, and it’s not going away anytime soon. That’s why it’s important to improve your search engine ranking so people can find your website more easily than your competitors.
How to improve my website ranking?
This post is a step-by-step guide to improving your Google rankings quickly. It’s the only fast SEO tactic that I know of. If you’ve never done it before, there may be huge opportunities to improve your Google rankings. The key is in your Analytics.
Search engine optimization is an accumulation of strategies and techniques used to increase visitors’ number to a website by obtaining a high ranking in search results.
Whether you know the basics of search engine optimization or this is the first article you read, this list will give you an action plan of the best ways to improve your website search engine rankings. So if you are still asking, “How do I improve my search rankings?” keep reading.
Before you get started on your website, it’s a good idea to install and use these website tools. Tracking your progress and current successes is important. Analyze every aspect of your website to increase traffic.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tracking tool. It can be very complex, but many reports are only a few clicks away that could be very helpful. Using the Channels report will show you how your organic traffic compares to your website’s other traffic.
You can easily dig a little deeper by clicking on ‘Organic Search’ in this report to see what pages users are finding on Google (Landing Page). Unfortunately, most keywords will show up as (not provided). That is where Google Search Console comes in.
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Google Search Console
While Google Analytics won’t give you many specific keywords people search for, Google Search Console will. Google search console will tell you details of your organic search ranking. This means you can see how each page on your site ranks for specific keywords that users searched on Google. The dashboard will also warn you if your site has any technical issues that may hurt your organic search ranking.
Now that you know some details about how your content is performing let’s get into the action items for your website. We could come up with endless tips and tricks to share, but we’ve boiled it down to 6 ways that will help increase your search ranking.
Keyword research
Use search data and research your competition to find the best targets for each page on your website. Depending on how big your website is and the resources you have available, start with the most content pages and are helpful for your customers. Some examples would be your top one or two product/service pages or a well-written blog post that provides detailed information your customers are looking for.
Strategically select which phrases you want your pages to rank well for
The pages you choose should have a clear message that is focused on one topic. Here is where you research what phrase your customers are using to search for this topic. You can use many tools to find out how people search (Google keyword research tool, and you’ll find ads or lists of free and paid tools). This step could have a separate blog post dedicated to finding the right search phrase, but if we had to pick the most important piece of advice, it is to choose a specific and relevant phrase. If it is specific, it will be several words long, and if it is relevant, it will appear multiple times throughout the page.
Once your keyword phrase is chosen for a given page, consider these questions:
- Can I use part or all of the keyword phrases in the page URL (by using keywords in folders)?
- Can I use part or the entire keyword phrase in the page title?
- Can I use part or the entire keyword phrase in page headings and subheadings?
Answering yes to these questions can improve your search engine ranking. Be natural and user-friendly, though. For instance, you do not want the word “engineering” to show up three or more times in the URL or have the phrase Northern Lights repeated in the page title and every heading. Readability and usability still trump search engine optimization.
Remember, don’t use the insider terminology you use. Focus on what your everyday customer may search for.
Write informative copy that people seek.
Beyond page URL, title, and headings, content is most influential on search engine rankings. Write content that is helpful and includes keywords and synonyms that get your website found by Google and other search engines. Repeat your keyword phrase several times throughout the page—once or twice in the opening and closing paragraphs and two to four more times throughout the remaining content.
Don’t forget to use bold, italics, heading tags, and other emphasis tags to highlight these keyword phrases—but don’t overdo it. You still want your language and writing style to read naturally. Never sacrifice good writing for SEO. Make sure it’s still readable for your visitors. We recommend following the Story brand process to create clear and compelling messages.
Link to other pages
Links from other sites to yours—are one of the most heavily weighted Google ranking factors. As you’re writing copy for the page, you’ll often find yourself referencing other topics that you’ve already published. Internal linking is selecting a phrase and adding a hyperlink to the blog post or referencing page. These links will get some users to click through and read your other pages, but more importantly, search engines will crawl these links too. The keywords you hyperlink are called anchor text. This gives the user and search engines context about the page you link to, so it is important to use meaningful keywords in the hyperlink.
Tip: It may be easier to read your copy after the writing is complete and actively look for opportunities to link to other pages. This is especially important if you know you have new content that you want people to read. It is best to develop an internal linking strategy that groups and cross-references all of your site’s great content. This can be challenging but rewarding for your search engine rankings.
Mobile-friendly design and improved page speed
It’s no secret that more and more users are coming to your site from mobile devices. Make sure your website design is mobile. Also, optimize the images, code, and content to load each page quickly. Visitors will leave slow websites, and search engines will notice. This is why having a fast website will improve your search engine ranking. You need great content, but website design and development are important when asking how to make your website rank.
Use ALT tags with all your images.
Always describe your visual and video media using alt tags or alternative text descriptions. . They allow search engines to locate your page, which is crucial—especially for those who use text-only browsers or screen readers. Users love them, and search engines do too. That’s why you should always use descriptive (keyword-rich) ALT tags for all your images. Alt tags also keep your site accessible. These are only a few of the many methods for improving your search engine ranking.
Aim For Position Zero
When a user asks a question in Google Search, Google sometimes pulls content from a relevant website and displays it in a special featured snippet or answer box above the #1 search result. Getting content into a featured snippet is a great way to increase traffic (Snippets include a link to the page where the content came from) and boost the credibility and visibility of your brand. To increase your chances of having your content selected as a featured snippet by Google, think of likely searches related to your business and pepper your site with clear, authoritative answers.
Start improving Your Website search engine rankings
If you can go down this list and put a check next to all ten items, chances are your website is already ranking well. If not, each one you can implement will begin to improve your search engine ranking. Achieving great search engine rankings through effective SEO techniques takes time and dedication. You now have your plan of action, so what’s holding you back?
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