SEO Basics: 7 Quick Wins to Rank In The Top Ten

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Want to be on the first page of Google? It’s not as hard as you might think as long as you understand what SEO is, and you grasp a few SEO basics

Like everything in life, there are no guarantees with Google. However, we put together a few quick tips to clear up the most common issues that might prevent you from getting organic traffic.

If you’re stuck on page two and don’t know why, it’s time to take a hard look at the following list. Wanna dig deeper? Read through out our SEO checklist for a more complete analysis of technical issues.

1. Create Compelling and Comprehensive Content

Create great content and the rest will take care of itself, right? Wrong. Engaging content does, however, lay the foundation for a superior search result.

As always, do a competitive analysis to see what the rest of the results look like for the search queries you want to rank for.

If Google favors a concise answer or a particular piece of content, don’t write 5,000 words of irrelevant fluff. However, if Google is displays a comprehensive answer, now’s the time to go all in.

Great content ideas don’t take one day to complete, it takes hours and hours of research and exhaustive refinement, regardless of length. It also needs to be revisited and updated as necessary.

Write full comprehensive coverage of a topic that satisfies your primary query and relevant/related queries/questions for the audience. Get unbiased online reviews and step back, thinking what you would want to see if you typed in that search query.

Always remember: quality over quantity. Do not focus your efforts on subpar content, as lower bounce rates and higher dwell time tend to correlate with higher rankings. Just because your page has 2,500 words of unique content doesn’t mean it’s great content. I’ll say it as plainly as possible: word count does not equate to quality.

Research and analyze the backlink profiles of the top 10-20 results for your desired query or queries. Take note of the number of links, what types of links they are, the page authority ranges, anchor text ratios (exact, broad, other), and whether the placements can be reverse engineered.

Backlinks are still a powerful ranking signal within Google’s algorithm, especially at the individual page level. Quality over quantity wins the game here as well, so focus on encouraging editorially-earned backlinks from a diverse set of unique, authoritative websites.

Building high-quality backlinks in 2017 have become increasingly difficult, but without them, cracking page one in a competitive vertical is near impossible unless you’re relying mostly on overall domain authority. But not all of us can be Amazon.

3. Update Your Website Architecture

If you want a certain page to rank, it needs to be part of your cornerstone content. An orphaned page, or one that is hard to find on your website, is not going to get the job done.

Where applicable, include your target page in main navigation menus and create a holistic and well-thought-out internal linking strategy. Both strategies will allow for the most authority to flow to your page and lead to the page being crawled more often.

Poor example: https://www.mysite.com/products/product-1/?p=2837

Good example: https://www.mysite.com/mens-clothing/sweatpants/joggers

As a rule of thumb, you should be able to navigate to a page in 3 clicks or less. For a good user experience and positive search signals, clean, keyword-focused permalinks are your friend. If you decide to update or change a URL, make sure you 301 the old to the new to preserve authority.

4. Optimize Your Target Pages

Make sure you have properly optimized heading tags, titles, and alt image tags. But don’t go bananas with over-optimization. Check out our article to learn about the ideal keyword density for SEO. But there’s a lot more to know, so we wrote an entire post about content optimization.

After you make changes, submit your URL to Google through Search Console to make sure search engines crawl the most current version.

A good starting point for on-page optimization is to research the first page of Google for your search query. What does Google favor amongst those results? Look for patterns you can mimic and see how you can improve on it further.

Link out to other relevant resources from your content. You’ll give users more information to explore so they don’t return to the search engine results (SERP). Plus, you should give credit where credit is due.

Cite industry experts, back up claims and statistics, and communicate relevancy to search engines through good outbound linking practices. Do, however, add the nofollow tag to paid or sponsored links as well as websites you may not trust. Not doing so could result in an unnatural outbound link penalty.

6. Optimize for Mobile and Page Speed

With Google’s mobile first index live, you must have a mobile-friendly website. If your website isn’t responsive, forget about it — you’re going to get left behind and continue losing visibility.

Google’s John Mueller urged webmasters who still have m.site.com mobile subdomains to make the switch before the index goes live.

When visiting a website, users like yourself want instant loading, updated answers to queries, and content that is easy to see, navigate and digest. Major websites are already making the switch to Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP, which is proving to be fruitful for key website metrics and conversions as mobile search continues to grow exponentially.

Test your website’s mobile speed on think with Google.

See more PageSpeed Insights from Google.

7. Build Brand Awareness

Is your brand, product, or service well-known? Generate some immediate buzz to boost engagement metrics and potentially increase purchases, social shares and links.

Launch an influencer marketing campaign or combine Pay Per Click (PPC) with SEO to bring more brand awareness to your page from different mediums. Once you’re on the first page of Google, PPC will also provide more first-page real estate by effectively capturing two positions.

Another great option is to run a paid campaign on Facebook. This will introduce your page to a hyper-targeted group of people that should be interested in your product or service if you target them correctly.

Conclusion

 It can be downright frustrating when you feel like you’re stuck on page two. If your on-page SEO strategy is rock solid, it’s definitely time to take a look at your backlink profile and fill in any glaring gaps that exist between you and your search competitors.

Remember, quality and consistency wins the race; don’t take short cuts that could harm you in the long run in the rush for short term results.

Continue building awareness and engaging with your target audience. Check rankings once per week or month, instead of daily to paint a more accurate long-term trend picture. Celebrate the small wins along the way and keep pushing for that coveted page one.

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