There are many factors to consider if you want to rank high on Google.
In general, we have compiled the important steps you need to take if you want to rank better in Google search results.
How to rank high in Google search results?
There are many reasons for you to enter Google rankings. You can grow your online business by ranking first in search results. Being in the first places will allow you to reach your potential customers more easily and indirectly increase your sales and achieve long-term success.
10 steps to get high rankings in search results:
- Check the quality of your content.
- Improve your link profile.
- Configure your On-Page SEO correctly.
- Add internal links to your most important pages.
- Perform a technical SEO audit.
- Improve your page load time.
- Make sure your website is mobile friendly.
- Update your website to HTTPS.
- Tell Google about your website.
- Take advantage of social media.
1. Check the quality of your content
First of all, you need to check the quality of your content.
Unique and original content must be published on your website. Quality content is an imperative and one of the most important factors for the success of a website.
Copying and republishing content from other websites won’t work, as content originality is important for Google rankings. Google scans can detect duplicated content and remove your website from results or place it in the last rank.
When conducting a content review, consider the following factors:
Does it meet the user’s purpose?
Every content that you post on your website must have a specific purpose. It should also include the subject the user wants to reach.
When a user types a query in the Google search box, they expect the websites in the first locations to give him a definitive answer or solution.
Be honest when making your assessment, otherwise you won’t be able to improve your content and ranking.
Can search engines understand the content?
In addition to make sure you are writing content for users, you also need to make sure that search engines can understand it.
“It means you have to learn how to write SEO friendly content.” SEO friendly content helps search engines interpret your content correctly.
Remember that search engine crawlers are computer programs, not humans, and the only way to understand what a content is about through the signals you give with Content SEO.
Is there enough relevant content on your website?
In addition to having quality content, you also need a lot of content. In any niche you are considering, competition is intense and it is important that you stand out from the crowd.
It is not enough to have a single content on a particular topic to be placed in the top rankings.It shows that your website has a lot of relevant content on a topic will improve your ranking.
Algorithms no longer search for specific keywords in content. They analyze the website as a whole and try to understand how relevant the users are and what they are looking for.
Is your content long enough?
Blog post length is a ranking factor. Although Google says it doesn’t use the word count in its ranking algorithm, it does point out that the content should be comprehensive and understandable.
Many studies have shown that longer content gets better in search and gets involved in more social media posts.
There is no magic number for how many words you will write your blog posts, but as a general rule, articles with more than 1500 words have a higher chance of achieving higher positions on SERPS.
All you have to do is give users exactly what they want. Don’t give them additional information that they don’t need to know.
It is always good practice to check your target keywords on Google and analyze the length (and type) of content that appears in the first positions. This will give you a very good idea of how detailed your content should be.
2. Improve your link profile
To get Google’s attention, you need to mention other websites pointing to your website.
If backlinks come from large and reliable websites, they have more value and can positively impact your Google rankings.
3. Configure your On-Page SEO correctly
In addition to getting high quality inbound links, you also need to make sure your On-Page SEO is correct. On-Page SEO includes a set of rules for making your website SEO friendly.
An SEO friendly website is much easier for Google to “read”, and by understanding the content of a website, it increases the chance of getting a better rank.
4. Add internal links to your most important pages
An internal link is a link to a web page that points to another web page on the same website.
Internal links are a very powerful way to tell Google what a page is about. Since users can find new pages on the same website, it allows you to gain more navigation by increasing the browsing time within the site.
5. Perform a Technical SEO audit
Technical SEO occupies an important place in the entire SEO process. If there are problems with the technical part of SEO, your rankings can be negatively affected, even if you do everything correctly.
We strongly recommend that you conduct a Technical SEO audit every six months to ensure that Google can seamlessly access and index your website.
The most important considerations to review during the audit are:
- Index coverage report in Google Search Console
- robots.txt file
- Canonical URLs
- Structured data markup (website and individual pages)
- HTML and XML sitemaps
- Broken links and 404 pages
6. Improve your page load time
Even though page load time is part of Technical SEO, you can increase Google rankings with fast loading. The bounce rate of websites with a load time of more than 3 seconds is quite high without loading the page.
7. Make sure your website is mobile friendly
More and more people are using their mobile phones day by day to do Google searches. There are many studies showing the importance of mobile search for businesses and website owners.
When it comes to ranking, having a mobile-compatible website is a must, as Google now “punishes” websites that don’t offer mobile users a good mobile experience.
8. Update your website to HTTPS
The use of https is a ranking factor known since 2014. It’s a mild signal as stated by Google, but it’s still one of the easy steps you can take.
You get a comparative advantage on websites compared to a competitor website that is not SSL enabled.
Also, since 2018, the Google Chrome browser marks non-https websites as unsafe. This situation can drive customers and visitors away.
9. Tell Google about your website
Google created the Google Webmaster Tool to communicate with webmasters.
Webmaster Tool is a great way to tell Google about your website and find out what Google knows about your website.
The preferred URL in the Webmaster Tool, target country, sitemap, etc. There are various settings that you can configure, as well as tests to help you rank high on Google.
10. Take advantage of social media
The impact of social media on Google rankings is a popular topic among digital marketing managers and SEO experts. A successful social media marketing campaign has many advantages for website ranking.
Why should you rank higher on Google?
Good rankings are difficult to get. Placing in the top rankings is possible with much patience and hard work. Knowing the benefits of having a web page at the top of Google, you can get the motivation to work until you reach your goals.
Higher rankings mean more traffic – The first advantage has to do with traffic gains. The higher your rank, the more organic traffic you will get from Google.
Note that statistically the top 5 positions get more than 60% of search traffic.
It is the signal of trust – one of the reasons why Google has become the world’s most popular search engine is because of people’s trust in it. They trust Google because they know that when they search for something on Google, they will find what they want.
When users find your website on the first pages of Google, they know it’s a good website because Google trusts it and shows it in the results.
You will get more social media shares and comments – A website on the first page of Google gets more social shares and comments due to the more traffic it gets and the “trust” explained above.
Good rankings on other search engines – Google isn’t the only available search engine, it’s the one with the most traffic. However, other search engines have similar SEO rules to Google and when you get a good ranking position on Google you will also rank well in other search engines.
Conclusion
Google wants to find quality websites that will constantly index them in order to offer their users the best possible results.
As a webmaster, your goal is building a website that provides real value to users, you need to be sure that Google can understand what your website is about.
Finally, be patient. It takes time to rank high on Google, but if you keep working in the right direction, there is nothing that will prevent you from taking the positions you want.
