Step-by-Step Guide on Improving Your Google Rankings

Google’s masterful algorithm changes 500-600 times a year. It’s incredibly challenging for even the most brilliant web analysts to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

In fact, only a decade ago did the use of internal linking skyrocket because webmasters realized that link building was the secret ingredient to ranking; as long as you had enough link density with the right keywords, your website ranked well in search results.

Those days are well over, and while link building is still important, simply shoving a dense mass of internal links onto every page of your website won’t land you the number one position on Google, at least not for long. We’ve seen many websites be penalized for using link farms to artificially produce a complex network of links to increase their website presence. There are many other strategies that don’t involve automations as well, like manually stuffing links in unnatural places and paying for authority websites to link to you. These are all practices frowned upon by the Google sphere.

So, how do you rank nowadays? We’re well aware that there are no clean-cut formulas to beating the Google algorithm, but we do know what the current algorithm favors: organically-built websites that add value to the consumers’ time. These are some pointers that worked for many startup websites and could very well work for you:

Google Ranking Tips: Link Build Naturally

If you’re linking too many websites to your anchor texts, you’re not only making the content unreadable, but you’re also raising suspicion because of its spammy undertone. The idea is to naturally link websites that are relevant to your content and provide further information to benefit the consumer. You can also link internally to your own pages without going overboard. There isn’t a specific amount of links that you should stick to per page to avoid penalty, but we advise that you use 5-6 links maximum per blog post, and as many as 100 links per home page or folder pages; as long as each link has a purpose and is needed, user experience will increase and you will slowly climb up the ladder of search rankings.

Google Ranking Tips: Target a Few Keywords at a Time

Google Keyword Planner is a great tool to estimate the competitiveness of each keyword you want to rank for. You can target two or three keywords or key phrases at a time, and including these keywords in your website title, descriptions, headlines, and subheads will be crucial to your ranking abilities. Google has announced that it will not favor EMDs (Exact Match Domains) by also taking into consideration other website content, so simply stuffing keywords into descriptions and headlines won’t do. So, focus on creating valuable content, and be intentional about mentioning these keywords or key phrases where it fits naturally.

Google Ranking Tips: Submit Your Sitemap to Get Indexed

If you’re eager to get your new website changes indexed by different search engines, you can create a XML sitemap and submit it to all the major search engines you desire. If you have a WordPress website, this process will be even simpler! The Google XML Sitemaps plugin is a quick download, which will automatically create, update, and submit sitemaps to Google as soon as you create any changes to your website. These tricks will quicken the process of getting indexed from weeks to mere minutes. Google doesn’t guarantee a quicker process 100% of the time, but submitting your sitemap often speeds up this review process.

Google Ranking Tips: Write Relevant Content

Link building, keyword placement, and sitemap submits won’t be enough to rank if your website is only one or two pages thin. You should ideally have pages of relevant content to support all the key phrases you’ve decided to focus on. There’s no wonder why a larger book of relevant content would look much more legitimate and worthwhile on first page results than a landing page with few supporting pages.

Google Ranking Tips: Use Other Platforms

It’s important to use your social media platforms as a way of nurturing leads; likes and retweets won’t help you rank on search engine results, but large networks likely have a greater ranking authority than your website, helping you in that way. It’s also worth mentioning that getting people to endorse and share your link with consumers within the same demographics will increase your organic visits.

Google Ranking Tips: Increase Your Loading Speed

Google released a statement in 2010 that site speed is one of the signals that determines how well a website will rank. This makes perfect sense for search engines because their objective is to provide the best, most accurate search results for the user. In that sense, high-ranking websites that are slow drive consumers to other search engines.

Google Ranking Tips: Make Your Design Responsive

It’s true that Google favors websites that are mobile-friendly, given the statistics that 94% of smartphone users search for information using their phones. 77% of these searches take place at home or at work, meaning that consumers choose to use their phones over desktop computers. The fact that such a large number of people use their phones, Google wants to prioritize the websites that will be the most accommodating to consumers worldwide. So, make your website mobile-friendly to add a great bonus to your ranking score!

Google Ranking Tips: Be Patient

Google’s Matt Cutts revealed in a 2010 video that “there is little weight given to domain age,” which tells us that it does indeed count towards SEO, however little that might be. In the case of new websites, domain age makes all the difference simply because older domains generally have more SEO-rich content; even with an optimized website, new webmasters might have to wait several months for search rankings to truly be accurate. We suggest submitting your sitemaps to your favorite search engines, developing great content, advertise, and reap the benefits of your hard work while you wait during this time.

Do you have your own tips to start ranking quickly? We’d love to hear from you!

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