Your keyword rankings will fluctuate over time. But can you keep them constantly increasing?
Yes. By keeping up with current SEO trends and practices and reading our blog articles where we provide useful insights.
For example, this particular post offers 5 ways to improve your rankings! By following these best practice tips while monitoring your progress along the way, success is all but guaranteed.
What Is SEO Ranking?
SEO ranking is the position of a website on search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher a website ranks, the more visible it is to potential customers.
Ranking well in SERPs requires time and effort: A good SEO strategy should incorporate both on-page and off-page optimization techniques such as keyword research and link building (more on these later).
Why Are Search Rankings Important?
Because higher rankings equal more traffic. Studies show that the first organic search result on Google receives 39% of all clicks, and 75% of users don’t even scroll past the first page of results.
If your website isn’t visible on SERPs, you won’t get much traffic.
Your first goal must be to get your website onto the first page of SERPs. This means paying attention to both on-page and off-page SEO techniques and ensuring you target the right keywords.
Your next goal is to rank as high as possible on SERPs. Yes, you want that much-coveted #1 spot, but even the second or third position can make a big difference in how much traffic you get.
Climbing up the rankings requires more advanced techniques, such as creating high-quality content, optimizing your website structure and architecture, and getting backlinks.
SEO isn’t just about getting more visitors to your website – it’s also about improving user experience and creating content that is engaging, relevant, and useful to your visitors.
It also means optimizing your website for speed, usability, and accessibility. Also, ensure your website is optimized for mobile devices so that users on the go can access it easily.
How Search Engines Rank Pages
Let’s take Google as an example. Ranking a website page is a three-step process.
- Crawling: Googlebot finds and reads webpages on the internet.
- Indexing: Google stores crawled pages in a giant database called the index.
- Ranking: Google then decides in which order to show results served from the index when someone enters a relevant search query.
Search engines analyze the content of your web pages to determine how well they match a user’s query.
They also look at other factors, such as the quality and quantity of links to your website, how quickly it loads, and whether or not user signals are positive.
What are user signals? These are things like how many people click on your results and whether or not they stay on the page.
All these factors combine to give each page a score. That score determines the page’s ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
What Are Google Ranking Algorithms?
Google Ranking Algorithms are a set of complex mathematical formulas that Google uses to decide which webpages should appear in the SERPs.
They are constantly changing and evolving, so it’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest algorithms and how they work.
The algorithms analyze a variety of factors, such as page content, backlinks, page speed, and other metrics, to determine the best web pages for a particular query.
How Do Google Ranking Algorithms Work?
Every time a person enters a query into the search engine, Google uses its algorithms to find the most relevant and useful web pages related to that query.
The algorithm looks at factors such as content, SEO (search engine optimization), and technical aspects of web pages to determine which pages should be listed in the SERPs.
The algorithm looks for features such as keywords, meta descriptions, and headings that can help it determine which web pages are most relevant to the query. Additionally, Google looks at backlinks and page loading speed to identify which pages should rank higher than others. The algorithm also looks at the user’s location, device, and search history to personalize the search results.
As SEO experts, Young Caesar can help you optimize your website so that it ranks higher in Google’s SERPs. We can help you create content that is keyword rich, optimize page titles and meta descriptions to make them more user-friendly, and identify backlinking opportunities that can boost your SEO. We can also help you optimize your page loading speed and ensure your website is compatible with all devices.
Google’s Confirmed Ranking Factors
- Relevant keywords: The algorithm looks for keywords related to the search query and ranks pages accordingly.
- Quality content: Content should be unique, engaging, informative, interesting, and helpful to readers.
- Quality backlinks: Having links from other high-quality websites to your website will help boost your ranking in search engine results.
- Page titles and meta descriptions: Make sure your page titles and meta descriptions accurately describe the content on your pages.
- Mobile compatibility: Optimizing your website for mobile devices is essential for good rankings.
- Page loading speed: Pages that load quickly appear higher in search engine rankings.
- Image optimization: Optimizing your images improves page loading speed and helps improve your ranking.
- Security: Switching your website to HTTPS will improve your ranking in search engine results.
- Internal linking: Linking to other pages on your website helps keep visitors on your website longer and boosts search engine rankings.
Factors that can adversely impact your rankings:
- Duplicate content: Search engines don’t like duplicate content. Make sure you have unique, original content on all of your pages.
- Keyword stuffing: Using the same keyword too often can hurt your ranking.
- Broken links: Broken links are a sign of an outdated website, which can hurt your ranking.
- Unnatural links: Too many links from the same source can seem unnatural.
- Slow page loading time: Long page load times can make visitors abandon your page. That’s not good for your rankings.
- Intrusive popups: Advertisements and popups can be disruptive to users. Search engines don’t like that either, so keep them to a minimum.
- Irrelevant content: Search engines reward relevant content. Include keywords that relate to the topic of each page on your website.
Correlation vs. Causation
A cautionary note on correlating specific factors with ranking performance: correlation does not always equal causation. Just because two things are related doesn’t mean that one of them is causing the other.
For example, in SEO, there may be a correlation between mobile-friendly design and higher rankings, but that doesn’t mean that mobile-friendly design is causing the higher rankings. It could be that websites with higher rankings are more likely to invest in mobile-friendly design.
Similarly, trying to manipulate certain factors to improve rankings could be fruitless if those factors don’t influence ranking performance. The only way to know for sure is through careful research and testing.
Another example is word count. You can’t simply think that long-from content is always better for rankings – what about dictionary entries? These are typically short – but highly relevant to search intent. What does this illustrate? The content needs to be relevant to search intent and engaging rather than simply long-form to impact rankings positively.
Ultimately, your goal should be to create content that is useful and informative for your target audience. That way, you can be sure it will have a positive impact on rankings.
How to Improve Your SEO Rankings
Now that you understand the importance of SEO and how it affects your website rankings, let’s explore some tips to improve your SEO performance.
1 Keyword Research
If you want to optimize your SEO rankings, keyword research is essential. Your research must include finding out which keywords people use to search for content related to your business or industry.
Focus on three things:
- Search volume: How many people are searching for the keyword.
- Keyword difficulty: How hard it is to rank for the keyword.
- Search intent: What the user is looking for when they search.
What do we mean by search intent? Search intent is the aim of a user when they type in a query in the search engine.
As SEO experts, we consider four types of search intent:
- Informational: The user is looking for information about a certain topic.
- Navigational: The user knows the name of a website or page and is looking for it.
- Transactional: The user intends to buy something.
- Commercial Investigation: The user is researching products to buy.
By considering all these factors, you can come up with an SEO strategy that will help your content rank higher in search engine result pages.
Once you understand the keywords people are searching for, you can start optimizing your website.
You can begin to create content around the key terms that are most relevant for SEO purposes.
To take keyword research to the next level – try going through your competitors’ websites, analyzing their content and titles, or using tools such as Google Keyword Planner to get more insights about the words people are using for searches.
2 Quality Content
In brief, quality content is the cornerstone of any successful SEO strategy. That means creating original, interesting, and keyword-rich content that serves your audience’s needs.
What constitutes quality content in 2023? Here are a few tips:
- Provide information that is accurate, up-to-date, and relevant.
- Use images and videos to break up long-form content, making it easier for readers to consume.
- Optimize your content for accessibility and readability.
- Add meta tags and descriptions to ensure your content is optimized for search engines.
- Utilize headings, subheadings, and bulleted lists to make your content easier to read.
- Leverage internal links to drive readers deeper into your site and external links to add additional context.
- Use statistics, facts, and quotes to strengthen your content’s credibility.
- Incorporate storytelling into your content to make it more engaging and entertaining.
- Don’t forget to optimize for mobile devices and ensure all your content is responsive.
What is Google’s EEAT? How does it affect content creation?
EEAT, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, is a set of criteria used by Google’s Search Quality Raters to assess the quality of a website’s content.
To create content that passes Google’s EEAT standard, you must:
- Demonstrate your knowledge and experience in the subject matter
- Provide accurate and up-to-date information
- Use reliable sources
Content should also be written in a clear, concise manner to ensure it is easily understood by the reader.
Create content that meets Google’s standards for SEO optimization and it will increase your website’s credibility in the eyes of potential customers.
3 Get Quality Backlinks
The better your content, the more likely it is to attract backlinks.
- Reach out to influencers and other industry leaders to get high-quality backlinks.
- Work on creating naturally shareable content – infographics, videos, etc.
- Participate in relevant forums, blogs, and communities to get your content noticed.
Monitor your backlink profile regularly to ensure that you’re only getting quality links from reputable sources. Disavow any spammy links to avoid being penalized by search engines.
4 Improve Your Technical SEO
Technical SEO is often overlooked, but it’s a driving factor in increasing visibility.
- Audit your website for any errors and fix them to ensure your content is indexed correctly. Good website audit tools include Semrush, Google PageSpeed Insights, and Screaming Frog.
- Make sure your website is mobile-friendly and fast loading (40% of users leave a website that takes longer than three seconds to load).
- Ensure metadata (title tags and descriptions) are optimized for search engines.
- Use 301 redirects. They help avoid duplicate content issues and preserve any link juice your old pages have.
- Use structured data markup (such as schema.org) to give search engine bots more context on what’s important.
- Use a sitemap and robots.txt to help search engines crawl your website more efficiently.
- Utilize social media sharing buttons to help your content reach a wider audience.
5 Track Your SEO Rankings
Tracking your SEO rankings involves looking at where your website appears for specific keywords or phrases within search engine result pages.
- You can use a keyword rank tracker tool to easily track the rankings of your pages and ensure that they are improving over time.
- Monitor your search engine optimization efforts by running regular keyword rank checks to see which keywords are driving the most traffic to your website.
- Check how well your on-page SEO efforts are doing by running an analysis report on your website.
- Keep a close eye on the competition and track their SEO rankings to see how you stack up.
- Utilize data from your keyword rank checks to make informed decisions on what areas of content need improvement and which ones are driving the most organic traffic.
- Track fluctuations in keyword rankings over time to understand how search engine algorithm changes affect your website’s visibility.
- Periodically check the quality of your content and update it regularly. Outdated content can quickly become irrelevant in the eyes of search engines.
- Keep an eye on competitors and their keyword strategies.
- Keeping up with industry trends can be a great way to stay ahead of the curve in terms of SEO.
Key Takeaways
Tracking and understanding keyword rankings over time should be a significant part of your overall SEO strategy.
Be aware of the fluctuations in rankings and stay on top of changes in search engine algorithms.
By regularly monitoring your keyword rankings, you can adjust your strategy accordingly and boost the effectiveness of your SEO efforts. Doing so will help you stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of SEO.
Good luck!
