Five established approaches to improve Your Google rating

A lot of things have changed SEO since Google first came online in 1998.

The only thing that hasn’t changed is this: your organic traffic is directly related to your search engine rankings.

If you have a lot of keywords in the Google index and they appear at or near the top of the search results, you will get unlimited traffic.

Conversely, if you have a great website but are not visible in SERPsyou are destined to have little, if any, organic search traffic.

In this post, I will break down the steps needed to improve your Google SERPs. However, I know you are equally interested in the following.

How long does it take to improve your Google rankings?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and give you a definitive answer: “It depends.”

While I realize this is frustrating and seems rude, it is the truth. SEO doesn’t happen in a vacuum and every situation offers a unique set of variables.

Skill, budget, level of competition, and the quality of your site can play a role in how quickly someone can move the dial.

So, with that in mind, let’s break it down in more measurable terms and look at what you can do to make things happen sooner rather than later.

During the episode Ask Googlebot In June 2021, John Mueller, Google’s search spokesperson, said it could take “a few hours to several weeks” for Google to index new or updated content. He also noted that just because a page is indexed doesn’t mean it will immediately rank for anything, if ever.

Due to many factors in play, rapid changes in SERPs are not expected.

Mueller has said in the past that even if you make drastic changes to your site’s design and functionality, it can still take months or even a year to make an impact.

But that doesn’t mean you should just sit back and wait while you upgrade your website. He mentioned some specific ideas for speeding up indexing, which include:

• Preventing server overload by speeding up the server and website.
• Visible links to new pages.
• Avoiding the use of unnecessary URLs such as category page filters.
• Taking advantage of user submission methods such as uploading sitemap files and using a URL inspection tool.

Finally, Mueller reiterated that the best way to rank is to create high quality content that searchers will find useful. In his words, make your website “fantastic”.

How to improve your Google ranking

Getting to the top 10 SERPs in less than a year takes a lot of hard work, skill, and sometimes luck.

And that brings us back to the topic of today’s discussion on how to improve your Google rankings.

So if you want increase sales and conversions by getting your website to the first page of Google, here are five steps you need to take.

1. Start with a good foundation

Poor website structure and information architecture can ruin even the best SEO campaigns.

If your site is difficult for users to navigate and difficult for Google to crawl, your rankings will likely suffer. Pay attention to Basic online indicators.

Conduct a technical SEO audit

Google’s algorithm includes thousands of signals machine learning and AI to determine search rankings.

Still, sticking to the basics, even today, will give you an edge over many competitors. Here are the steps you need to know for conducting an SEO audit.

2. Provide a great site experience

Google defines page experience as “a set of signals that measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a website beyond its pure informational value, on both mobile and desktop devices. “

Basic online indicators

Whether it’s a mobile or desktop site, you need to constantly monitor the speed and constantly improve it. Specifically, Maximum Content Coloring (LCP), first input delay (FID) and the cumulative displacement of the layout (CLS).

File size

Use your favorite image editing program for file size.

Before uploading, you can further optimize the file size with applications such as Optimizilla, Image recyclingand Kraken.io.

Finally, always confirm that the image dimensions match the reserved image space to maintain the clean, structured look of your live webpage.

Browser cache

When a web browser loads a page, it loads a number of resources. Browser caching stores these resource files locally on users’ computers.

That way, when the user navigates to a new page, those resources don’t need to be reloaded.

For most, the best way to enable caching is to add code to your web host/server’s .htaccess file.

There are free plugins available for WordPress, for example WP SuperCache.

Handling scripts

Before you load countless JS and CSS files to enhance your site, make sure you need these extra extensions as they end up slowing down your site.

Can also reduce your files by, for example, removing comments to make things run faster.

And if it’s possible to combine multiple scripts into one file, go for it. That way there will be only one callback to the server to load all the scripts.

Here’s something tools which can help you measure and monitor basic web metrics.

Mobile friendly

With the development of search and mobile first indexyour site must pass Mobile friendly test.

According to Google, “… our content search, indexing and ranking systems typically use the desktop version of page content… Mobile-first indexing means that we will use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking…”

To avoid mobile ranking issues, you should double down on search intent and performance.

HTTPS

Check if your website connection is secure. If the page doesn’t work over HTTPS, learn how to do it keep it safe.

No intrusive interstitials

Pushy interstitium are page elements that hide content from users’ view, usually for promotional purposes.

3. Optimize your pages for Google

It goes without saying that you should write great content that will draw readers in so they can read to the last paragraph.

To quickly win them over to your target audience, start with a quick summary introduction that tells readers what to expect in this post.

Some of the best strategies you can use to make your content Google-friendly are:

Tell Google what your pages are about

You do this by adding structured data throughout the site. This makes it easy for Google to understand what your content is about.

Schema.org is the format preferred by Google. Schema types include recipes, companies, products, authors, and more.

Keep your headlines short

In addition to turning your readers off because they won’t be able to get all the information at a glance, very long titles will also hurt your keywords’ SEO impact.

To properly match SERP length, your titles should be between 135 and 159 characters long. SEO plugins can help you identify titles with too many characters.

Create unique titles and meta descriptions

Although titles and meta descriptions do not have a direct impact on your site’s ranking, they are very important in showing the value of your content from the SERPs.

So, if done right, they can increase yours CTR and consequently increase your traffic.

So make sure you write unique titles with a simple and catchy description that also includes your target keyword.

In addition, you should also know that if you do not write your own unique and vivid meta descriptions with targeted keywords for your pages, Google will automatically generate them.

Obviously, auto-generated ones won’t be as effective for your site as ones you’ve built properly. Still, you have to be careful not to overfill yours addresses and descriptions with keywords.

Be specific in your internal anchor text

Get straight to the point if you want your content to rank for a specific keyword.

Many websites unknowingly use obscure and elusive anchor texts to link to other pages on their site.

This is a big mistake as it will not be a clear enough anchor for your visitors and even search engines.

4. Optimize for search intent

The development of modern search has its roots in Hummingbirdslater supplemented by Rankbrain and then BERT.

The end game for Google is to better understand the search context to display results that match the intent of a given query. In fact, Google’s continued success depends on it.

The four common types of search intent (aka user) are:

• Navigational – searching for a specific website.
• Informative – search for knowledge.
• Commercially – searching for data (such as reviews) to make an informed purchase decision.
• Transactional – search for purchase (where to buy).

How to optimize for search intent

1. Check the SERPs for the keyword phrase you’re interested in ranking for. If the top results don’t match your page, you won’t rank. In other words, if Google has decided that the search intent is informational and your page is transactional, that page will not rank well.
2. In cases where the page does not match the top results/search intent, you have two options:
   • Edit your page to fit the purpose.
   • Create a new page that fits the purpose.

5. Optimize internal links

The links on your site should be placed strategically and you should also ensure that all links work properly. Here are some tricks to up your link game.

Connection architecture

The depth of a page on your website should not be more than three clicks; an effective trick that people sometimes forget.

Correct internal linking strategy means your best pages appear on the first level.

An effective way to do this is to create a homepage section that links directly to your ‘Best Selling Products’ or ‘Top Categories’.

Fix broken links and duplicates

Some website owners have a habit of ignoring broken links because they don’t realize the impact of the poor user experience they create.

By searching your website content with tools like Sitebulbeasy to spot 404 errors and fix them in no time!

Get your website mentions back

Regain your website mentions by setting a Google Warning which will help you track mentions of your brand across the Internet.

And in case any of the mentions come without a link back to your site, contact the webmaster and ask them to link back!

Takeaway

SEO can seem overwhelming. You can get caught up in analysis paralysis and do nothing.

However, it is important to remember that even in 2022, just by following the basics as described above, you will achieve online success.

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Featured image: Kaspars Grinvalds/Shutterstock