Digital marketing has set a new standard for companies that want to promote their solutions in the most effective way. Google and other search platforms are responsible for generating more than half of internet traffic, so these platforms have become the best place to market your products and services. But, learning how to rank higher on Google and maintain these positions takes a lot of practice, so you need to create an organized strategy and test out different variables until you get the right results.
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/seo/
How to Improve Keyword Search Ranking Results
According to some estimates, only 25% of people scroll past the first page of Google search results when conducting a query. So, if a company is serious about promoting its services through search engines, the main goal should be to get on the first page of all related organic searches. Thing is, there are probably hundreds of different keywords you need to target. And, there are also dozens of competitors who are also looking to rank for these keywords as well.
So, what’s the best way to get higher rankings on Google?
Every single business is different, so there is no exact formula to help you claim the top rankings on search engine results pages. Instead, you need to understand how search engines work and develop a tailored plan that’s designed specifically for your company.
At Fannit, we have decades of combined experience developing digital marketing strategies for clients in a huge variety of industries.
We have in-depth knowledge about search platforms and their ranking algorithms, so we decided to put together an article on how to rank higher on Google organic search results.
Let’s dive into our Google SEO how-to!
How Do Search Engines Work?
Before going over search engine optimization and how to improve SEO, it’s important to understand how Google and other search platforms work.
Whenever people need a product or service, they don’t look up companies in the yellow pages or save business cards anymore.
Instead, most consumers will pull out their smartphones or use their laptops to conduct a search on Google or any other search engine.
Search engines use simple pieces of software called crawlers to read and analyze the different websites that are available on the internet.
Also known as bots or spiders, crawlers literally read every site they analyze line-by-line and send back their findings to the search engine they originated from.
Google and other platforms then create a database of sites and the pages they contain in order to provide the most accurate match whenever a search is conducted.
As you’ll see later on in this article, there are hundreds of different factors that affect your Google rankings.
And, there are also many tools you can use to track your performance, like Google Search Console.
That said, to have a chance at claiming one of the top 10 positions, all websites need to focus on:
Quality
Whether you’re writing a new blog post, developing email sequences, or rebuilding your entire site, you always need to keep quality in mind.
Potential customers can easily identify companies that make budget decisions and compromise the quality of their services.
To avoid this, create a customer-centric culture that keeps prospects in mind whenever you have to make a business decision.
The quality of your content and web design is crucial. That said, you need to keep functionality in mind.
For example, instead of simply going over the benefits of your product or service, try to solve common challenges that your customers face through your content.
Likewise, the design elements on your blogs and other promotional materials should complement the content, rather than cluttering the page.
User-facing elements are very important, but you need to make sure that the technical parts of your site are properly structured.
If your site is not designed to communicate with search engines in an effective way, Google’s crawlers may not be able to read or categorize your site properly.
Which, in turn, lowers your chances of getting to the top results.
Platforms like Google Search Console can help monitor your performance in terms of search rankings, so make sure you implement these from the get-go.
Security
A decade or so ago, most consumers weren’t particularly motivated by a secure site or platform.
Today, cybercrime has become one of the leading threats for consumers and companies alike, so creating a safe online platform is the only way to instill confidence in your audience.
In most cases, people who use Google Chrome and similar mainstream browsers get a warning whenever they access unsecured websites.
This can deter these users from browsing your site, which can end up increasing your bounce rate.
And, Google has actually confirmed that security features such as the inclusion of SSL certificates on each site are part of their ranking algorithm, so failing to implement the right measures may actually result in lower rankings.
In addition to implementing SSL, you should work with a reliable hosting provider and install security plugins to help protect your site.
If you’re not sure how to improve new security measures or want to learn more about how they affect your ranking, contact Fannit today and our team will be glad to help.
User Experience
Google’s main goal is to deliver the best experience for users in order to encourage them to come back and use the platform again.
In addition to the actual content, the search engine pays a lot of attention to the layout of your page, internal structure, loading time, and other variables that affect user experience.
Even if a page contains relevant information, it doesn’t necessarily mean that users will be able to understand it. If the content is not properly divided into headers, sub-headers, and paragraphs, visitors will have a hard time digesting the information.
In many cases, this lack of logical formatting will push users to hit the back button and find another alternative.
To prevent this from happening, your content needs to be broken down into different headers and presented in an easy-to-read format.
It’s crucial to use white space to your advantage, but make sure that your pages don’t look dull or empty.
While Google Search Console will help track performance in terms of Google positions, you’ll need additional tools to assess user experience.
Organic Marketing vs. Paid Ads Campaigns
Most companies that research how to rank higher on Google are looking for ways to improve their organic rankings.
However, there are two different ways you can promote your services and products on Google, which are organic marketing strategies and paid ads campaigns.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your website in order to get higher organic positions. T
his type of marketing is known as an “organic” approach because you don’t have to purchase ads in order to get your page on Google results pages.
Instead, you work on developing a website that achieves higher unpaid rankings, which can transform your website into a lead generating machine.
Some businesses choose to run pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns through Google Ads.
This network allows you to place paid adverts on Google search results pages and throughout the company’s massive network.
These ads appear on top of the pages with the highest rankings, so they offer a huge advantage in terms of visibility.
And, the best part is that you only have to pay when users click on your ads and visit your pages.
Despite the fact that both focus on promoting services through Google, PPC campaigns and SEO marketing are unique approaches with a huge list of differences, including:
Costs
The biggest difference between SEO and PPC is the cost of each strategy.
As the name suggests, PPC campaigns require an upfront investment because you need to pay for each user that clicks on your ads.
If you don’t add money to your campaign, your ads will never go live or start attracting potential customers.
SEO, on the other hand, is free in the sense that you don’t have to pay for each user that visits your site or start off your campaign with a set budget.
That said, you still need to invest resources into your SEO campaign to make sure that your content has the right effect.
In addition to developing an SEO strategy, you also need to put aside time to develop web content, update your pages, and publish blog posts on a regular basis.
After your campaign is launched, you must monitor its performance and carry out improvements based on the performance of your content.
But, even though this may sound time-consuming, it’s still a more affordable path than PPC.
At the same time, SEO tools like Google Search Console are free, so you can track your performance without increasing your expenses.
Performance
It’s no surprise that SEO and PPC are now two of the most popular forms of online marketing.
These two approaches have the ability to send large volumes of quality traffic to your site and many companies have employed one or both of these strategies to exponentially increase their customer base.
With this in mind, it’s important to note that traffic generated through PPC ads tend to behave differently than people that come from organic channels.
Users acquired through paid campaigns are more likely to make a purchase because, in most cases, these people have the intention of buying and they are aware they’re clicking on an ad.
This is the reason why one-third of companies use PPC for direct sales purposes.
Organic users, on the other hand, tend to produce lower conversion and purchase rates.
But, you can generate a larger volume of organic visitors at a fraction of the cost of a PPC campaign, which makes up for the slight dip in performance.
The best part about the two is that they can complement each other. If implemented properly, SEO and PPC can work synergistically to ensure you achieve short as well as long-term success.
Turnaround
Both SEO and PPC have the ability to transform your site into a lead generating machine, but they don’t produce results in the same timeframe.
SEO is a long-term strategy because it helps produce results gradually.
In most cases, it’s not possible to get to the top 10 results right away. Instead, companies need to make improvements in different areas of their website, which will slowly but surely propel them to the first positions.
The results are also long-lasting, so you can develop a maintenance strategy that involves fewer resources once you’ve achieved the top positions.
PPC is a more direct approach because it starts producing results right away.
If your campaign is structured properly, you can generate new leads the day your ads go live. And, the longer you run your campaign, the more you’ll build your sales funnel.
However, keep in mind that the results you get with PPC only last as long as your ads are running, which means that you’ll stop getting new leads after ending your campaign.
What is SEO?
As we mentioned before, SEO stands for search engine optimization and it’s a marketing strategy that focuses on helping you achieve higher organic rankings on Google.
But, even though the concept is easy to grasp, knowing, monitoring, and adjusting the elements that affect your website’s organic rankings can easily become a full-time job.
It’s important to understand that Google and every other search engine update their algorithms to provide better results for users.
Most of these algorithm changes are relatively small, but every now and again a search engine can implement an update that alters the way page rankings are calculated.
If you’re not aware of these changes, you may suddenly lose the rankings you worked hard to achieve and end up on the second page trying to regain your pre-update status.
Although there are hundreds of different factors that impact your page’s SEO, all of these can be divided into on-page and off-page variables.
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On-Page SEO
On-page SEO encompasses all of the variables on your website that affect your Google rankings.
This includes user-facing elements as well as backend variables that affect how your website communicates with crawlers.
Moreover, on-page ranking factors can be adjusted by your web manager, so all of these variables are fully under your control.
Keep in mind that on-page SEO includes both the content on your pages and your site’s interface, so both of these affect your rank.
If you frequently update the content on your pages and publish new blog posts on a regular basis, you’ll increase your chances of getting your page on Google’s top 10 positions.
Likewise, if you have an intuitive interface with a logical structure, search engine bots will have an easier time reading and categorizing your website.
Some of the on-page ranking factors you need to pay attention to include page loading speed, page design, content quality, internal linking structure, feature functionality, and URL structure. And, you should also make sure that you have descriptive and keyword-rich meta tags in place.
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Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO is a lot trickier because it consists of external factors that affect your Google ranking.
In simple terms, Google uses a combination of on-page variables as well as information found on third-party platforms to ensure that your site is connected to the user’s query.
The key to achieving good off-page SEO is to identify all of the external factors that can influence your Google rankings.
These depend on your industry as well as location. But generally speaking, off-page ranking factors usually include review sites, company directories, and Google business lists.
If your website isn’t on all the relevant platforms or has a bad reputation on these, there’s a strong chance Google will penalize you with lower rankings.
Additionally, your site’s backlink profile is one of the biggest off-page factors you need to keep in mind.
Simply put, Google assumes that quality websites will link to other leading platforms. Whenever a website links back to your website, they send traffic and give you an SEO boost that can result in higher rankings.
However, if you have low-quality platforms linking back to your site, Google may categorize you as a low-quality site and give your pages a lower ranking.
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/seo/link-building-mistakes/
How to Rank Higher on Google
Now that we’ve gone over the definition of SEO and how it affects your rankings, it’s time to learn how to get your website on Google’s first page.
If you want to successfully implement SEO and improve your Google rankings, you have to follow an organized approach.
It’s almost impossible to launch the perfect SEO campaign from the start.
Instead, companies have to learn about their audience, develop a set of initial materials, and optimize these for optimal performance later on.
With the above in mind, SEO is extremely flexible.
You can implement it as an independent strategy that supports the rest of your digital marketing efforts.
From PPC to email marketing and social media, having a solid SEO campaign can produce better overall results from the rest of your channels.
Resources:
Here are some of the basic steps you need to take to improve your site’s Google rankings.
Study Google’s Ranking Algorithm and Ranking Factors
While it’s true that Google’s organic ranking algorithm isn’t public knowledge, you need to learn as much as you can about this formula and the variables that affect your positions.
There are dozens of different studies conducted by Moz and other leading platforms that give us a good idea of how Google’s algorithm works. Reviewing their findings can help you understand how these platforms calculate page rankings in order to deliver better results to customers.
There are dozens of well-known factors that influence your Google website ranking.
These include the content on your page, bounce rate, loading speed, usability, external links, the headers you implement, keywords used, and a variety of other elements.
By studying these ranking factors and learning how to implement them properly into your site you’ll increase your chances of success.
Also, you should find the time to stay updated with major algorithm changes.
There are potentially hundreds of updates every year, but Google tends to announce major changes in advance to give websites the opportunity to make adjustments and mitigate the effects of these changes.
If you’re aware of the changes that are coming and adopt the right practices early on, you may end up with better rankings after the algorithm update is rolled out.
Analyze Your Current Performance
Your current rank will directly affect the approach you take because it will help determine how much work needs to be done in order to get to the first page.
To get a good idea of where you stand, you should analyze your web pages individually as well as your site’s overall performance.
Assess your domain score, how many keywords you rank for already, and other variables to create an SEO strategy that helps you close the gap in performance.
If your web pages are not being ranked at all, you may need to take a basic approach and implement more complex strategies later on.
This means that you have to revise your entire site structure and review relatively basic elements on your pages.
As a general rule of thumb, the lower your rankings, the longer it will take to get to the first page.
Sites that are positioned on the second page still have a long way to go, but the gap is significantly closer than platforms that are not ranking for any keywords.
In these cases, applying advanced SEO tactics and optimizing the existing pages can be enough to propel a second-page site into one of the first Google search ranking positions.
Run a Website-Wide Diagnostic
When implementing SEO, many companies jump straight into content production and completely forget to fix any errors on their website.
Besides the ones tagged as no-index, Google and other search platforms will read every single one of your pages.
Even if they seem minimal, small mistakes can add up and eventually get you penalized by Google.
It’s possible to conduct a manual analysis to ensure that all elements on your website are functioning properly.
But, this is extremely labor-intensive and leaves a lot of room for error.
If you want to improve your site’s Google rank, you need to run a site-wide diagnostic using specialized tools that help you identify the different errors on each page.
There are many different types of errors that you can fix, including broken links, typos, server issues, duplicate pages, and many more.
Partnering with a knowledgeable marketing agency can simplify this step and allow you to focus on areas that improve the customer experience.
Optimize the Technical Part of Your Website
If you want to learn how to improve Google search ranking, you need to understand and learn to optimize the technical part of your site.
Search engine bots are relatively simple programs, so you need to have a structure that helps crawlers analyze your site.
Technical SEO is an umbrella term that includes internal linking, JavaScript indexing, meta tags, sitemaps, and keyword research.
You should note that keyword research is also important in the content development phase, but we’ll go into more detail about this later.
The main takeaway is that the technical SEO team needs to get the list of keywords that need to be implemented from your strategist in order to get the best results.
Moreover, companies also have to ensure that they have mostly no-follow links (unless they’re internal) and make sure that all the features work on their sites.
Your technical SEO team should also determine your site’s domain authority, but this information should also be shared with your strategist to develop a tailored plan.
Conduct Keyword Research
Conducting thorough keyword research is essential for any company that wants a higher search engine ranking.
That said, choosing the best keywords isn’t always easy because you have to be aware of how potential users conduct searches.
For instance, targeting “broader” keywords that have higher search volumes can help increase the number of visitors to your site.
This is great in terms of traffic and SEO as a whole because it can help boost your relevance, especially if users spend a lot of time navigating your site.
But, the most likely scenario is that only a small percentage of these users will ever become customers.
You can also choose to target more specific keywords that have lower search volumes and higher conversion rates.
The reason for this is that users that search for these keywords have spent time refining their query, so they know exactly what they are looking for.
It’s no different from someone who walks into a store knowing exactly what they want, which reduces the amount of work the sales personnel has to do and a customer who has no idea what he or she really needs.
If you choose the wrong keywords, you may end up with large volumes of uninterested users and low-quality links.
Instead of assuming that all keywords you choose are related to your industry, dig a bit deeper to make sure there’s no ambiguity.
Keywords that are used to find more than one type of product or service should be used carefully. And, these should always be used with other keywords that help give a bit more context.
Resource: https://www.fannit.com/seo/keyword-research/
Choose Keywords with Low Competition (And Gradually Move On to Tougher Keywords)
There’s a slim chance you’ll be able to claim one of the top 10 positions overnight, especially if you’re not ranking for any relevant keywords yet.
If this is the case, you should start off by finding keywords with low traffic and equally low competition because they can help boost your site authority in a short time frame.
Through this approach, you’ll be able to claim better page rankings on relevant keywords relatively quickly.
Sure, these keywords may not generate as much traffic, but they are usually ultra-relevant and can help Google take notice of your pages.
Which, in turn, creates a path towards more difficult keywords.
Long-tail keywords usually have little competition and low search volumes, plus they are relatively easy to rank for.
Simply put, long-tail keywords are keywords that have more than two words and they are used when people are trying to conduct specific searches.
Getting ranked for relevant long-tailed keywords will give you an SEO boost and help improve search engine rankings at the same time.
Find Highly-Searched Keywords that Generate Traffic
Getting good rankings for long-tail keywords is a good start because it will help ensure that Google has categorized your pages properly.
Once you have a few first page rankings under your belt, you should implement more competitive keywords into your content and start trying to rank for these keywords.
Choosing high volume keywords is an essential part of improving Google rank, but you’ll have to create specialized content.
Competitive keywords that attract a lot of traffic have a lot of competition, so creating long-form pieces for these keywords usually generates the best results.
The process of researching the keywords you’ll use is just as important as the platform you use to find your keyword set.
Google’s Keyword Planner provides search traffic volume and other details, but it’s a relatively basic tool.
To get the best results, complement your findings with a reliable keyword research platform like AHREFS or SEMrush.
Match User Intent with Your Content
Keyword research is very important for improving Google ranking, but not all high-volume keywords will yield the right results.
Just because a keyword is relevant to your industry and has a large search traffic volume doesn’t mean you should automatically target it.
In some cases, users are just looking for information about a specific topic and have no intention of making a purchase. To avoid drawing this type of traffic, you need to carefully choose your keywords based on the user’s intent.
In this context, the user intent refers to the goal that prospects want to achieve when looking for something on the web.
This varies from one industry to another, so you need to evaluate each keyword and determine whether it has a purchase or informational intent.
And, even though you should pay more attention to keywords with purchase intent, you should also develop content around informational keywords to boost your authority.
Determine Why You Have a Low Ranking
Knowing your Google SEO ranking is a good start, but making improvements without identifying the areas that need it most won’t yield the best results.
Instead, you should determine why you have low rankings.
Or, better yet, figure out what your competitors are doing better than you and start closing the gap.
With so many SEO variants, there’s a flurry of reasons why competitors are ranking higher than your site.
When analyzing the technical side, pay attention to the structure of their meta descriptions, URL, and content in general.
You should also note the keywords that first page sites have in common and implement these into your content.
After taking note of the keywords and other technical factors, you should analyze the competition’s content in a separate process and develop a plan to develop similar pieces.
Some of the elements you should keep in mind include:
Type of Content
During your analysis process, pay close attention to the type of content your competitors are producing.
Sites that rank higher on Google tend to cover similar topics and present the information in the same way. So, you should try to identify the patterns and start developing similar content for your site.
Figure out if your competitors are developing informative content to take a friendly approach or if they are being more direct.
Producing direct content tends to discourage consumers but there are some industries that benefit from this approach, so checking out what companies on the first page are doing can help you get a higher ranking.
Format
Great content doesn’t always come in the form of blog posts or web pages, so you have to evaluate the formats your competitors are using and work on developing your own versions.
Sites can publish content in a variety of formats, including blog posts, pages, standalone articles, white papers, ebooks, reports, infographics, and many more.
However, you need to adjust your content depending on the format you choose.
The development of an ebook is a good example because this format allows for long-form content.
But, it’s usually gated, which means that users have to leave their contact information to gain access to this resource.
Now, in addition to developing an ebook that’s functional and full of valuable information, you also have to develop landing page content. PDF files such as ebooks don’t have any SEO value, so you’ll need to produce keyword-rich landing page copy in order to rank for the keywords you’re targeting.
Angle and Value
Depending on the industry you’re in, you should analyze the angle that leading competitors are taking in their content.
Are they providing in-depth information about the cause of the issue? Or, do they focus more on the solutions and the benefits they bring? Different audiences have distinct expectations, so you should try to get a clear image of what your potential customers are expecting.
Additionally, you should try to determine how valuable your competitor’s content is.
This is extremely difficult because there is no step-by-step process to determine value.
You simply have to go through their publications and figure out if they are offering superficial advice or if they are delivering actionable content.
You should always remember to strike a good balance between writing for search engines and for your audience.
Using the competitor’s structure as inspiration is a good strategy from a technical perspective, but always create content tailored to your company and its audience.
Delivering valuable content is a must, but you can figure out what your audience deems as useful based on what the leaders have to offer and create your own materials off the information you gather.
Publish High-Quality Content on a Regular Basis
Developing content that works as the anchor of your site can help give your pages a higher ranking and attract more traffic.
But, you should publish high-quality materials on a regular basis to keep your content fresh as well.
In addition to creating longer articles and blogs, you should develop a publication schedule and find supporting topics that are related to your main pieces.
You can then write a set of smaller articles that link back to your most important posts and boost your authority.
For instance, if your longer pieces detail your products and the issues they can solve, you can create shorter blog posts that talk about each specific challenge in more detail.
Remember, the more regularly you post, the more often crawlers will read your site and send updated information to Google.
Build a Solid Backlink Profile
Backlinks refer to links that are located in external platforms and, as we mentioned before, they are extremely important if you want to rank higher on Google.
Sometimes referred to as external links, having your backlinks from quality sites gives you an SEO boost.
But, poor-quality links will quickly drain your site from its SEO value, so you have to make sure that only trustworthy platforms send traffic your way.
If you want to collect good links, the first step is to develop content that others want to link to. This means that you have to deliver value to readers through your writing.
Instead of focusing on your product, help readers understand the different solutions they have available. You can then use this opportunity to talk about your goods as an option, giving your content an informational feel while still retaining its marketing value.
Once you have great content in place, you should join relevant social media and forum conversations, using these platforms to share your content.
You can also reach out to websites that have good authority scores and explore the possibility of having a guest post that includes a link back to your site on one of these platforms.
The trickiest part of getting quality links for search engine ranking optimization is getting low-quality sites to stop linking back to you.
Reaching out to the web manager is always a good start, but you may have to take more drastic options if the platform refuses the request or is unresponsive.
Outsmart Competitors
When you’re evaluating competitors, you may notice that they have some information in common, but each one takes a different angle in their content.
Rather than mimicking one specific competitor, you should outsmart the leading companies and fill the gaps in their content.
For this to work, you need to create your article outline while studying the leading pages.
Make note of the headers they use, the information they discuss, and the statistics they quote.
Then, create a keyword list that includes all related terms, which should be more comprehensive than any one competitor’s. Ranking higher is all about quality and functionality, so the more information you cover, the higher chances of retaining consumer attention for longer periods.
Develop Better Internal Linking
How can you improve your keyword search results? Content and quality external links are two of the most important cornerstones, but your website also needs a logical structure.
Your site’s internal linking will help crawlers and users navigate your different pages.
If your pages don’t follow a logical or cohesive internal linking structure, you may divert traffic from your most important pages and get a lower ranking.
To rank higher on Google, you should optimize your pages to make sure that all internal links make sense, have a follow attribute, and improve usability across the board.
Reduce Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is a metric used to measure the number of people that exit your pages within a few seconds of arriving.
This means, in most cases, that the page contains low-quality, insufficient, or illegible content, so you need to adjust pages that have a high bounce in order to improve your Google rankings.
Keep in mind that a high bounce rate can also be the result of slow loading times, so you need to diagnose your site and figure out what’s wrong with each page. If you haven’t used headings to divide your articles, have poor external links, published content with a low word count, or installed plugins that increase loading time, you’ll want to improve these areas as well as any other elements that make users exit your pages right away.
Play the Long Game to Improve Site Authority
Even though unethical marketing tactics can temporarily grant first-page rankings, building authority the right way takes time.
After all, Google aims to deliver the best results to its users, so it needs to ensure that your site produces quality content on a regular basis.
Rather than focusing on quick methods, you should play the long game and work on getting a higher authority score.
Authority is built mainly through quality external links, good on-page optimization, and positive social signals.
Being active on social media and ensuring that your company’s information is up to date on pertinent local listing platforms are particularly effective to increase your authority and improve Google search results, which you can track via the search console.
Set a Benchmark and Monitor Your Performance
The process of achieving a better search engine ranking is not the same for all companies.
Rather than starting from scratch, you should set a benchmark for your different pages and create a plan according to what you need to do. It’s easier to get a page on Google’s top 10 organic search results if it’s already close to these positions.
So, focus on pages that require less work to get top Google rankings.
After setting benchmarks and making the first set of changes, monitor your pages to see how your updates affect its performance.
You need to collect enough information in order to understand organic search traffic, so wait a few days until you make another change. There are exceptions to this rule — for instance, if you stop getting any traffic at all. But, this usually signals an accidental error on the page rather than a mistake on the optimization side.
Optimize with Conversions in Mind
Web managers can take a lot of different approaches when optimizing their pages. For example, they can focus on optimizing for usability, to simply attract organic search traffic, or to achieve similar goals.
For companies, it’s imperative to optimize for conversions, which can consist of newsletter sign-ups, form submissions, or even sales.
It’s important to improve search engine ranking, but your site will not yield the results you’re looking for unless you convert prospects into leads and eventually customers.
To optimize for conversions, first you have to analyze the users who have already completed the action you’re looking for.
In other words, examine customers obtained through your site and try to reverse-engineer their decision-making process.
This will help you understand the elements that prompted the conversion and allow you to replicate the same concept throughout your site.
Ensure that All Pages Are Mobile Friendly
It’s been a few years since mobile took over desktop as the leading source of internet traffic.
Mobile devices have opened a new world of opportunities for consumers as well as the companies that want to promote their products to them.
That said, not all websites have taken the appropriate steps to ensure mobile users have a positive experience.
Mobile sites and apps have limitations and require maintenance. The best solution is to create a responsive site that adapts to the screen size being used by each prospect.
In a responsive site, all of your text, images, buttons and other page elements will be resized according to the user’s device, regardless of operating system or browser. This will help ensure that users can view your content in the appropriate format at home, at work, or on the go.
Create a Detailed Optimization Schedule
Once your improvements are in place, you have to create a detailed optimization schedule.
First off, implement tracking mechanisms like Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
Analytics provides user-based metrics, while the Google Search Console will allow you to assess the performance of each page in terms of rankings.
Next, determine how long it will take to collect enough information to begin the optimization process. This varies depending on each platform, so you’ll need to monitor your site closely at first until you have a better understanding of your organic traffic.
You’ll have to follow the optimization schedule religiously, but the frequency at which you update your site will decrease as your Google rankings improve.
Benefits of Learning How to Rank Higher on Google Through SEO
Now that we’ve gone over the steps on how to increase Google ranking for free, it’s time to discuss the benefits of SEO.
Optimizing your site to get each page on Google’s first positions has become a science in the sense that it requires extensive testing and monitoring.
The good news is that search engine optimization is a flexible concept, so keyword research and other practices can be applied to all types of sites.
With this in mind, it’s crucial to understand that SEO takes some time.
This is the reason why many companies choose to employ PPC while they work on ranking higher.
If you only want to improve your Google rankings, paid ads may not be a good choice.
But, if you’re looking to get customers while you figure out how to get better rankings, combining both techniques may be a great idea.
Gather Information About Your Customers
Even if you already have in-depth knowledge about your audience, learning how to rank on Google will help you uncover important information about your potential customers.
As part of your SEO strategy, you should research consumer trends and collect information about your audience, like their age, location, interests, and other details. You can do this by analyzing your site’s organic traffic and by conducting research using Google Trends and similar tools.
In addition to understanding the type of strategy you should implement, gathering information about your audience will help you find the ideal tone, topic, and content structure.
For instance, B2B companies may be able to identify the best formats for their next pieces of content, identify an engaging topic, and increase their chances of ranking higher.
Take Actions Using an Organized Strategy
Many companies still rely on relatively basic marketing strategies, so it’s common to see business owners trying to improvise to jumpstart their campaigns.
That said, companies that rank higher on Google aren’t in the top positions by accident.
If you want to improve your Google rankings, you have to design and follow an organized plan that will help you prioritize the right areas.
This is one of the biggest benefits of SEO because your strategy works like a guide to make better decisions down the line.
If your content isn’t attracting enough organic traffic, you can always optimize each one of your pages. In case you notice you don’t have as many external links as you need, your strategy will dictate your plan to collect more quality links and send larger volumes of traffic to your site.
However, remember that this benefit will only be as strong as your strategy, so make sure you have a detailed plan that covers all important parts of your campaign.
Improve User Experience
The user experience covers everything on your website, from the value of the content to the functionality of your features.
It’s one of Google’s most important ranking factors, so providing a good user experience is important if you want to get a high ranking.
If you focus on implementing good SEO best practices, you will ensure that users have a good experience on your site.
As part of the optimization process, you need to ensure that the content is readable, delivers actionable information, and all features on your site are working properly. This guarantees that bots will be able to analyze your site easily and that users understand and navigate your page in a logical order.
Rank Higher
Once you’ve answered the question “how do I get my website to show up on Google search?” and made strategic changes to your pages, you’ll start seeing higher search rankings.
Getting a higher rank on Google has a variety of great benefits, including the fact that it places your company among the industry leaders.
When trying to find a company online, users know that the leading companies usually appear on the first page.
If one or more of your pages are in the top positions, you’ll start attracting more attention and garner a better reputation.
Additionally, getting high rankings can help some parts of your off-page SEO.
When third parties are looking for quality platforms to link to, they behave like consumers and usually avoid going past the first page.
If your keyword-rich content is ranked in one of the first positions, there’s a higher chance of receiving links from quality sites.
Drive More Traffic to Your Site
The single most important benefit of having good SEO is increasing organic traffic to your most important pages. In the eyes of your customers, your site is an online version of your store.
Visitors will analyze all parts of your site, including the value of your content, the functionality of its features, and how often it’s updated.
Through SEO, you can make sure that all parts of your digital platform are designed to transform users into leads and customers.
So, when large volumes of organic traffic start pouring in, your site will have everything you need to collect user information, categorize your leads, and nurture them until they’re ready to speak with your sales team.
Getting an organic traffic boost is usually a positive event, but you have to analyze your traffic and make sure that visitor queries are related to your content.
If you use the wrong keywords or collect spammy external links, you may end up with irrelevant search traffic that increases your bounce rate and hurts your SEO.
Increase the Number of Online Sales
Even though some industries still rely mainly on closing deals over the phone or in-person, SEO can increase the number of sales you generate online.
A large portion of consumers uses the internet to find out more information about the products and services they want. If your site contains the information they need as well as mechanisms to capture lead data, you can exponentially increase sales with minimal effort.
If you want your team to close more sales, there needs to be a strong link between the sales and marketing departments.
Your marketing team is in charge of more than just finding keywords and increasing organic traffic. Once the information is collected, your marketing experts nurture and qualify leads until they are ready to be contacted by sales.
But, if this transmission of information isn’t seamless, users may be discouraged from doing business with your company, so having concise communication systems in place will help you make the most of your high rankings.
Control Your Company’s Reputation
One of the few things that traditional advertising and search marketing have in common is the importance of having a good reputation.
But, managing your reputation back then was very different than ensuring you have a good name today.
A few decades ago, monitoring your reputation was much more difficult than it is today.
That said, delivering outstanding service and ensuring that customers were satisfied was usually enough to maintain one’s reputation.
Now, review sites, local directories, and other platforms have empowered consumers to share their experiences with billions of other users around the web.
You need to find the platforms your customers use to review your company and monitor the feedback you receive to manage your reputation and ensure that you get enough organic traffic on your site.
Boost Branding Efforts
The rank of each page affects your reputation and image, but your rank will also impact the efficiency of your branding strategy at the same time.
Even if your conversion rate is average, having a high rank will result in increased exposure, which in turn can boost your brand image.
Since consumers trust Google to rank each search result based on quality and reliability, they will automatically assume that you’re one of the best providers if your company appears on the first page.
And, even if your conversion rates are about average, the sheer volume of visitors will be enough to create a buzz around your brand.
You just have to make sure that your content and page are ready in terms of quality as well as volume.
Once you get on the first page, you’ll experience a relatively large boost in organic traffic that may cause an outage if your servers aren’t powerful enough.
Target Specific Regions
It’s true that SEO doesn’t have the granular targeting features found in techniques like PPC campaigns, but you can still take steps to attract organic traffic from a specific region. And, this technique is particularly effective if your page already has a high rank.
When conducting a local search, consumers usually include keywords that have a geographical reference. If you want to target customers in a specific area, you can research these specific audiences, include geographical keywords, and create engaging content tailored for users in these locations.
Companies that want to attract organic traffic from large cities like New York and Los Angeles can choose to target smaller areas within these regions.
If you want to attract search traffic from smaller cities, you may have to create a different page for each one and attempt to rank for more keywords.
Remember, the same concept described above can be applied to almost all demographic variations, so you can choose to create content that targets people by age group, interests, and status, just to name a few.
Improve Campaigns on a Regular Basis
Increasing your Google rank is tough, especially if you’re in a competitive industry.
Unfortunately, many site managers invest a lot of resources into the first stages without considering the optimization process.
Optimizing each page is crucial because this process allows you to make improvements that result in a high rank and larger volumes of search traffic.
Not only this, but if Google crawls your site on a regular basis and it notices your content isn’t being updated or optimized, the search platform will reduce its crawling frequency.
This means that your updates will take longer to register in the search giant’s database, which means that it’ll take longer to achieve a high rank.
Ready to Get Better Rankings? Contact Fannit Today
Taking the time to learn how to rank higher on Google and attract more search traffic can help reduce your marketing expenses and transform your site into a lead generating machine.
That said, choosing the best keywords, attracting quality links, and understanding Google Search Console isn’t always easy, especially if you need to focus on a variety of revenue-generating activities.
If you’re looking for a reliable partner to help you rank higher on Google and increase the amount of search traffic on your site, contact Fannit today.
Our team of SEO specialists can help you find the right keywords, acquire quality links, and ensure your pages have a high rank whenever potential customers search for your solutions, so don’t hesitate to reach out.
Want to get more SEO tips, rank hacks, and innovative strategies? Contact us today!
