Any website owner aims to get a blog page rank high for more exposure. The goal is the visibility at the page results, and it takes a few adjustments to get to the first page top results. It’s even trickier to stay at the top because Google, the largest and by far the most popular search engine, tend to change SEO algorithms. You need to stay up to date and always look for ways to get more organic traffic. With that said, now is an excellent time to follow Smartly Done Websites advice to rank on Google.
Steps To Keep Your Website At The Top Results
If you want more people visiting your website, you need to realize that you can’t be idle and leave things to chance. Incorporate these tips to get rank at any search engine page.
#1 Write And Publish High-Quality Content
High visibility mainly comes from how searchable your content is. Nowadays, you may create content depending on what niche is trending. It is also likely for you to have competition because people will develop websites following that trend. If you are willing to compete, you must write relevant content that are informational and easy to understand by readers. People who find you are likely to come back and follow your website if they keep finding what they need in your pages.
#2 Keep Your Content Updated
Information is continuously being renewed, which is why you should archive your old content and create a new one with the latest facts and other useful data. You need to keep up with the latest information and always find them all over the Internet and offline sources. It’s one of the primary ways you can keep your organic traffic in the loop. When readers are getting the latest information from your website, they keep coming back for more.
#3 Incorporate The Right Keywords
If you want to look for specific information online, you turn to a search engine, and it gives you all the best results that contain the words you typed in. That is one of the foundations of how search engine optimization (SEO) works. You can use MOZ SEO tools for free to help you with the right keywords to use.
You need to incorporate the keywords that people search for at the search engines and place them appropriately at both the title, content, and URLs. It’s where a keyword planner can come in handy because it has all the target keywords that people search for in a month.
Google Keyword Planner gathers how many average monthly searches a keyword or keyword phrases have. The higher number, the better. Keywords increase the chances of your website turning up at the page results, so be sure to use high-quality keywords at your blog posts.
#4 Get Google Analytics To Monitor Website Traffic
Google Analytics is a powerful tool that you can see to track what people do at your websites. You can see which of your website’s pages attract attention and how many people are visiting your site. It’s free to use and setup. You may need to familiarize yourself with its features and challenge your technical know-how a little, but it will be worth it. Take the time to master this tool and get into researching more to optimize it to the fullest.
#5 Learn To Optimize Link Building
By linking them to your pages, you can benefit from websites that are more established with high-quality traffic. The purpose of link building is to get a trickle of the traffic from an authority site to leak into your niche website. Legit link building is time-consuming, but Google recognizes websites that have high-quality links. However, you need to be sure that the external website you link to is relevant to yours. Google gives a higher rank if your page is linked to another that is in the same industry or topic than unrelated links.
#6 Use Google Search Console
Another free and powerful Google instrument, Google Search Console allows you to track webmasters that link to your site, click on your website at the search engine results, possible spam issues, and more. With the data you’re getting from this tool, you’re able to analyze what you can do to improve your website ranking.
#7 Check Your Page Loading Time
Would you stay at a website that loads at a languid pace? Download speed is one of the significant reasons for page abandonment. Nobody will stay and wait for a website to load if there are many websites that you can still check. Google can also recognize your website’s download speed, and it can hurt your page ranking. You can use free website speed checking tools to see how your page loads.
Statistically speaking, if your page does not load for more than 8 seconds, that may mean it’s time to revisit your plugins and apps. You may need to disable the ones that you need the least. Other considerations include the images, GIFs, and video sizes that may also affect your pages’ speed. Update them to a more manageable size that will normalize the rate of your pages.
#8 Make Sure Your Website Is Device-Responsive
Google is now using website responsiveness as a basis for rankings. That means, your website should load properly in mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Using a viewport meta tag automatically resizes and fits the screen to be appropriate for the device of the user viewing the website. It also helps to avoid using Flash because both Android and iOS operating systems do not recognize Flash animation. It is best to create a website that anyone can adequately access and view from any type of device.
#9 Break Information Properly With Headers
Nobody wants to keep reading a very long single paragraph, and you, as a reader and Internet user, have to agree. People want something comfortable to read because not everyone has the patience for long paragraphs. Using headers improves the look of your website, but it’s also a way to entice readers to keep coming back to your site. There are word processors that offer different header sizes. Utilize the use of these headers and grow the number of people who are using your site.
#10 SEO-Optimize Images And Videos
Blog sites such as WordPress and eCommerce websites like Shopify allow users to label their images and videos using keywords at the ALT tags section. You need to ensure that these elements are appropriate to your niche and content as well. Using high-quality keywords the same way on images, videos, slideshows, and audio can impact your ranking by improving user experience. That translates to SEO rankings and organic traffic.
#11 Check For Broken Links
Link building is only beneficial if the links work. And although authority sites are more likely always to have working links, you can’t be too careful. Good webmasters have a habit of checking their links as well, and if authority sites are updating theirs, you need to see if your links to their pages are still working. URLs may update to keep them working along with the latest SEO algorithm.
#12 Use Canonical URLs
It sometimes happens that your website is months or years old, and you created a similar content to an old one. Or perhaps someone duplicated your content, or you intentionally did so in multiple languages. You can use canonical URLs to indicate a primary link by doing so at the Yoast SEO section if you’re using WordPress for your website.
#13 Use A Short Domain Name
It’s easier for Google to identify and rank your website with a short and clear domain name. Use keywords to help you come up with one that tells searchers precisely what your site is about. A shorter domain name is also faster to type and quicker to spot. It helps people identify your website easier as well.
#14 Format Your Page Properly
The overall look of a website and content flow draws in readers. A professional looking website should look clean that shows off your content. It’s easier to read and appears right in desktop and mobile devices. The following makes a well-formatted page:
- Use colored text sparingly
- Don’t overuse different types of fonts
- Organize your content
- Use numbering and/or bullet points for lists
- Consider readability (create shorter but clear sentences)
At times, HTML codes would appear instead of a straight text. You need to check for them after publishing your content. It also never helps to pick a simple template that displays the material well. Google analyzes pages and ranks websites with clean formatting that makes the content more natural for people to view and read.
#15 Fix Any Penalties Incurred
Even if you’re sure that your website tracking is in full effect, you need to check for any possible penalties at all angles. Sometimes, these penalties are not even your fault because of negative SEO that competitor sites penetrating yours. Analyze links and remove unhealthy ones from your website by using analysis tools such as Majestic, Open Site Explorer, and SEOprofiler, among others.
SEOprofiler, for example, identifies different types of links and labels them accordingly. You want Unique Active Backlinks, which are the natural and primary acceptable links to your website. Remember that compelling clean up means getting rid of wrong links from your site. Spammy links that redirect to your website can be removed by requesting it to website administrators.
As a last resort, you can use Google Search Console’s Disavow feature to stop “link juice” from unhealthy links from transferring to your website.
#16 Put Your WHOIS On Public View
WHOIS (literally pronounced as “who is”) is a system where a website’s collected data is stored, such as the IP address, location, and contact details. The information is featured in plain text that some webmasters choose to hide for various reasons. However, Google prefers that the said information remains in view that visitors can see. Otherwise, Google will see it as a deliberate act to hide information for illegal purposes.
#17 Don’t Get Reckless On Migration
There are few ways you can make a blunder when migrating to a different hosting provider or a new domain. Your site can be registered as duplicates or mess with your domain authority. Careful migration is a must if you don’t want your ranking to plummet. A simple change from HTTP to HTTP can profoundly affect visibility and may take a while for the website to recover.
#18 Don’t Forget To Add Contact Information
If WHOIS needs to be publicized, so does your contact information, especially if you’re a business with a physical store. Contact information makes it easier for your readers to call or find you and your business. It does not make sense not to add any details on your whereabouts if you want to make money off your website. It’s a way of risking people to report your site for not having the proper information. Google does not take lightly on websites that hide data that should be for public view, and you can be penalized for it.
#19 Spot And Fix Crawl Errors
There’s no point in creating a website if the search engine bots cannot get to your website in the first place. These errors are categorized by Google as site and URL errors, with the latter being more comfortable to fix. Dite errors include DNS errors, Googlebot not being able to reach the robots.txt file of your website, and ‘500’ and ‘503status codes described here’. URL errors include ‘404 Not Found.’ You can create an XML site map to monitor these errors that your website may experience.
#20 Use Local SEO
Visitors and locals are likely to use Google Maps to find the nearest businesses to where they are. Utilize this Google feature by adding your address and contact details to help people reach your business. Those who see and experience your products and services can later add reviews that will help you build your reputation. Using analytics for entrepreneurs helps you monitor how your business is doing and help you plan and improve areas to keep your business afloat.
Bonus #21 Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO focuses on optimization techniques that happen outside of your website. It includes backlink-building, social media marketing, guest blogging, and more. Off-Page SEO is often built around PR and marketing Outreach where you or your company can become thought leaders on topics in your niche.
In Conclusion
Website owners who use their blogs for business should utilize search engine optimization to increase traffic. It opens you to various opportunities to make money, such as affiliate marketing, or by merely gaining customers by letting them find out about your business. However, if you want to increase your chances of ranking in search engines, you must utilize white hat SEO tricks to convince Google that your website is worth a slot at the top results. Make it easy for people to read information no matter what device they use and spot and fix errors that could hurt your SEO. Being vigilant always pays.
Also published on Medium.
