While you may think that your website should have all kinds of traffic, but the sad truth is that this is not the case. Websites, like anything, need grooming, need tending, need care, and need love. First and foremost though, your website needs to be recognized by search engines.
If you have built a website but no one visits it, think about this. Did you ever really have a website at all? Like a map or GPS for a far-flung destination, search engines can make your website the king of an obscure niche market. So how do you engage the search engines?
It has been proven that “organic search traffic” is a prime driver for your website’s growth. Google has been making all kinds of updates for how they choose the fields meaning that you and your team have to remain nimble. But the organic and robotic-algorithm tension is real. Without further ado, here are 10 steps on how to improve your website ranking right now!
If knowledge is power, then you have to know a thing or two about where your ranking stands right now. This is the first step and also the most important step when it comes to website ranking. You have to know where you stand in order to identify where else you can improve on.
If you use RankReveal regularly, you will be able to know exactly where and what your current position is in Google search results.
Assessing your ranking will enable you to see who ranks above you, what they are doing differently than you, and how you can use your skills to overtake them.
Another thing that people don’t often talk about is your site’s speed. Imagine stumbling upon a website that you’re hoping to get more information, but ended up with nothing due it’s slow loading page.
Google PageSpeed Insights has suggestions and recommendations for you to speed up your website.
Many site operators don’t realize that this has anything much to do with your search ranking, but it’s actually a major Google ranking factor. You can learn more about your page speeds performance and how to optimize across all devices by using Google PageSpeed Insights.
Like anyone that is taken ill, if your site isn’t healthy, you are going to have problems. Just like how you wouldn’t start a car engine with no engine oil, you wouldn’t undertake a marathon without any running experience. So checking out your website’s health before you begin the optimization process makes a lot of sense.
One great tool for this is Search Engine Genie’s Sandbox checker tool.
Simply input your URL and click “Check” to get a better feel for your websites overall health.
Another helpful avenue for your keyword research is a Keyword Planner like this one from AdWords.
As a website operator, your whole enterprise comes down to three famous terms and they’re all the same, “keywords, keywords, keywords“. You can view that cynically as Hamlet may have or you can embrace the fact that people seeking out your website online will use these keywords to communicate their desires.
You, as the proprietor, needs to understand what users are searching for and why. You also need to know the difference between long tail keywords and short tail keywords.
Another crucial avenue for your website’s search engine ranking is content. Quality content. This may be the lynchpin behind any type of online strategy. Like Merriam-Webster or Betty Crocker, when your name becomes synonymous with something, your status is immediately moved up to an authority.
So how do you create quality content? Well, it’s not as simple as you think. There’s a lot of trial and error. Quality content is also not just about the length of your content, but it’s also about the depth of your content. How are you drilling down deeper than what’s been said before? How is your opinion differentiating itself from others in the same field? How are you setting yourself apart as a thought leader?
Quality content also doesn’t mean repeating your brilliance in another way. Like David Byrne reminded us, “Say something once, why say it again?”
While your content and your thought process and your insights may be brilliant, if your headlines are uninspired, no one will click on them.
The sad reality of any bit of brilliance is that engaging headlines wind up winning most of the clicks. There are some tricks you can use to help your headline stand out. Numbers in headlines are a pretty hypnotic draw; people often want to know what the “5 Best Foods for Arousal” or the “7 Sure Ways to Make Money” are.
Buffer and CoSchedule did a research and found these are the words and phrases with the highest shares.
Also, if you haven’t read the 10 Most Powerful Words To Create A Headline, you should!
One more thing you may not even appreciate about your website is the overall site design. You may have spent days or weeks creating this site, you may have used it for years, it may just be what is. That doesn’t mean that your customers will react the same way if your site is poorly designed.
A good site design can lower your bounce rate, increase page views, increase the time spent on your site, and establish trust. So does making your website responsive.
It’s also wise to look at your site on a variety of platforms. Your site may be fine on your office desktop computer, but have you ever visited it on a tablet or smartphone? If you haven’t, it’s pretty safe to say that your potential customers have.
These last three points are kind of wonky, if you need your kid or kid brother to help you understand them, that’s okay. Building your site architecture from the inside out is the best way to have a site that ranks highly on search engines. So you are talking about linking to yourself on your website. Basically, it’s been proven that internal linking works!
If you are linking to yourself in and around your own page (with other pages from your same site) you are going to increase your bonafide.
Not just that, it also helps your readers to find related articles so they don’t have to do it themselves. This will increase traffic and exposure for your website.
In much the same manner as the last, you are going to want to optimize your pages around keywords all the way down to your source code and URL. Even your meta description should be optimized so that your site is humming along at peak keyword relevance. Tools for this include things like SEOPressor so be sure to check out what they can do for you.
SEOPressor provides suggestions on how to optimize your content for better SEO score.
There are many ways that you can optimize your on-page SEO for better rankings. If you’d like to know more about on-page SEO, let us know!
If you want to generate the trust of search engines, there may be no better way to do this than to link to already established sources of authority. It may seem like riding a professionals coattails but even legends like Cal Ripken Jr. had to start somewhere. His dad may not have been the same iron horse that he was and Jr. earned his stripes.
The same way your website can and will by using anchor text linking. Another way to earn your clicks and earn your links to improve Google ranking is through content promotion on social media platforms.
We all know the big ones, but you can even generate more buzz on online forums like Inbound and Growth Hackers.
At the end of the day, you want your website ranking to be strong and robust. Ideally, you would be spending all of your time monitoring traffic patterns, keeping after problems, and tweaking things as you go. But then who would be running your business? Who would be living your life? There are some ways you can keep track of your sites rank with platforms like RankReveal.
Now you don’t have to track each keyword manually anymore! You do need to do a few things though:
Simple, isn’t it? Don’t forget to track the results once you’ve made changes on your website. With that, you will be able to identify which method works and which didn’t. Although it may take some time for you to see the results, trust me. It will be worth it.
Which of these strategies do you find work best? How do you rank your content? Share some of the tips with us in the comment down below!
Updated: 2/6/17
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