For anyone with a website, one of the primary aims is always going to be figuring out how you can hope to rank more highly on Google. With Google being the only search engine that really matters when it comes to your SEO, it’s vital that you understand at least the basics of how it works and what Google looks for when ranking pages.
Whether you are keen to drive sales to your business, improve the readership of your blog, or just monetise a static page, knowing how to rank more highly will always be important. And with the methods constantly changing and updating, it’s good to stay in the know. Here are some of the major things to bear in mind as you try to rank more highly on Google.
Work On Your On-Site SEO
There are a few major kinds of SEO, as you may already know, but one of the major and most important ones is the on-site SEO. As you might imagine, this refers to all the optimization that actually takes place within the website itself, in the design and layout of the individual pages that make up your website.
Generally, it only takes about two minutes to optimize a single page for SEO, and yet the results are significant, so this is definitely something that you’ll want to do. To optimize a page, you’ll first need to have researched your keywords. Then it’s all about utilizing those keywords in the right manner.
For instance, you’ll want to make sure that you use your primary keyword for a page at the start of its title tag (otherwise known as ‘frontloading’). You should also aim for length and depth of content; ideally you’ll want around 1,800 words at least, because the average results on the first page of Google contains 1,447 words.
And remember that content is still king. It is much more effective to offer up some fantastic content, as this is going to ensure that it gets shared so much more. So make sure that you do this, rather than being tempted to keyword-stuff the page.
Don’t Overlook The Technical SEO
As well as the on-site stuff, there is also the whole catalogue of SEO known as technical SEO. This is often overlooked or ignored altogether, but it forms a vital part of trying to rank your pages higher on Google. Technical SEO is a simple matter, and if you have used a website builder then it is probably already mostly okay, but you do need to check.
First of all, make sure that your website is completely optimized for mobile usage. The majority of browsing happens on mobile these days, so it doesn’t make sense to overlook this. Secondly, make sure your site loads as quickly as possible, as a site that is too slow is going to harm your bounce ratio and exit rate.
Finally, make sure that Google is actually indexing your site in the first place. It probably is, but it doesn’t hurt to check just in case.
Remember Search Intent
If there is one clear buzzword for search in 2022, it is probably ‘search intent’ – and with good reason. This refers to the way in which Google knows how people actually interact with your site. If people are getting what they’re looking for from your pages, then you will find your Google ranking only improves, so you need to know what their intent is when they are searching for your specific keywords.
In other words, you need to provide the information that people are actually looking for, otherwise Google may penalize you by dropping your site in the rankings. One simple way to make sure that your page is competitive is to take a look at the top-ranking pages, and see if there is any information there that you have forgotten to include. You’ll then want to find your own way to include that in your own page.
Keep People On Page
Bounce rate is one of the most important figures that you need to be aware of and improve if you hope for your pages to get more traction. The bounce rate simply refers to the percentage of people who go straight back to Google without clicking on a second page of your site, and without completing a call to action. This is a sign that they are not getting what they need from your site, and it’s something you therefore want to keep as low as you possibly can.
To improve your bounce rate, push your useful content up a bit – before the fold – so that they can see you are offering something valuable right away. It might be a good idea to have a content page early on too, so that people can click straight through to the information they are looking for. You’ll also find that having lots of visual stuff like images and so on can really help to keep people engaged.
Find More Keywords
Keywords are still the cornerstone of great SEO, and you need to make sure that you are finding as many keywords as you might be able to in order to make use of them. Of course, you still don’t want to stuff your pages with keywords, as that is not going to produce the best results. What you want to do instead is to find lots of keywords to create useful and compelling content from. If you can do that, you should find that you can get so much more out of them, and your pages will rank a lot higher in no time.
It is therefore worth carrying out more keyword research on a regular basis, just to ensure that you are utilising the best ones available.
Those are just some of the major things you can do to improve your page ranking on Google. Make sure to focus on these elements and you should have a more popular site in no time.