Content marketing is useful in increasing traffic, generating leads, improving sales – and contributing to SEO. Businesses can use content writing to improve their search ranking.

Well-written content can contribute to boosting a website’s position in search rankings. Though it is not the only benefit to a successful content marketing strategy, its effect on a business cannot be ignored.

• How do You Rank Higher in SERP?
• What is The Fastest Way to Rank a Keyword?
• How Does Content Marketing Help SEO?
• What is SERPs Marketing?
• How do You Increase Google Ranking?
• Can You Pay Google to Rank Higher?
• How Long Does it Take to Rank For Keywords?
• How Many Keywords Are Good For SEO?
• How Does Google Rank No 1?
• Is SEO Content Important For SEO?
• How do You Get on The First Page of Google Without Paying?
• What Are The Different Ways in Which a Company Can Improve Its Search Engine Rankings
• How to Rank Higher on Google Organically

Content marketing agency work on improvising their content to gain desirable ranks in SERP. Here are a few tips that can help you take advantage of and rank higher in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

How do You Rank Higher in SERP?

1. Write Unique Content

No matter how much content you create, it is never enough. There is always a way to create new pieces of content and this freshness of content is one of Google’s ranking signals. Yes, content freshness is a primary ranking factor.

Google checks by the publication date of the page. It includes modifications made to the content, new pages, increase in links towards a page, and increased traffic reaching a particular page. These show that older content can still be valuable, especially if they offer detailed analysis on a topic, are timeless or regularly upgraded to keep them relevant. 

2. Upgrade Old Posts

Many SEO agencies tend to ignore an old post even if it still generates a significant amount of traffic. It is more useful to go beyond the written posts to new formats that allow you to broaden your use.

Read Also: Best Content Creation Tools

Repurposing content can help you to analyse a topic further, create many types of content without losing its usefulness and sounding repetitive. This consumes less time than creating new content ideas, thereby giving freshness and continuous supply of beneficial content to boost your search ranking.

Identify ways of creating new content in the form of videos, infographics, lists, and podcasts. Doing this attracts more receptive target audience and achieve higher conversion rates. Every content type serves its purpose. As every audience has different requirements, experimentation can be useful, until you discover which formats work best for your business.

3. Eye-Catching Headlines

Headlines, as called, should make heads turn. Content marketing agencies must ensure that their content is valuable, relevant, simple yet appealing.

A good headline lies somewhere between being short yet informative. Use keywords in your headlines. When creating the headline, you must keep in mind the value it offers to the reader.

There are several headline analyzer tools to help you create eye-catching headlines. Such tools can help you explore ways to improve your headline. Once you add your headline, you receive a quick analysis, along with a score and tricks on how to improve it.

4. Visual Content

One of the effective ways an SEO agency can use to grab the user’s attention is by incorporating visual content. We tend to process images faster than text hence visual content has gained importance today. 

Visual content, a form of content in its own right, can give you an edge over competitors when promoting your business. Optimizing visual content leads to positive results when they are SEO-friendly.

5. Choice of Keywords

Keywords are the key to access your content. Targeting the most sought-after keywords can make it difficult for you to rank high in search. Do use different phrases for the same concept to achieve high ranking in searches. Pick words or phrases less competitive or think out of the box to get better results.

6. Link Building

Reach a broader audience by creating link-worthy content. This increases the visibility of your website and grows your search traffic. If several domains link to your site, search engines like Google understand that your content is informative and increases your rank.

Aim for reputable mentions from high-authority sites. However, also use less-authority sites to link you to drive traffic to your site. Come up with a link building strategy that will help others identify your content and feature it if they are relevant for the target audience.

7. Identify the Connection between Content and User Experience

Understand that the more beneficial your content the more it boosts your ranking when searched. A Google-friendly website is considered visually-appealing and valuable. The website must be user-friendly when reading. This is what the search engine looks for when they crawl across your pages.

One factor to consider apart from user experience is the loading time of a page and its images. Another factor is how structured and understandable the content is. 

Content must provide value and relevance for the target audience while being slightly SEO-focused.The ultimate goal is to get more users to your pages and an improved ranking on SERPs to help you attract a new audience who will appreciate your content.

There’s no need to be over-focused on SEO throughout the whole content writing process, but having an SEO mindset can offer valuable insights to make your content more constructive.

What is The Fastest Way to Rank a Keyword?

Here are 7 strategies to help you get lucky with your ranking quickly:

Use the less popular version of a keyword. If most of your competitors are targeting new york taxis but nobody is targeting newyork taxis, then it is going to be easier to rank for that alternative version. And even if the alternate version only gets 5% or 10% the search volume of the related keyword, you are still going to pull in more traffic by ranking #1 for it than you would ranking #30 for the more popular version of the keyword.

Use many keyword modifiers. If you can’t rank for the core keywords, try to add some related keyword modifiers to the page title. Is credit cards too hard of a keyword? Then consider targeting a phrase like best credit cards.

Mix up your on-page optimization. Rather than placing your keyword phrase all over the page, consider mixing up how you use it. If the page title contains the best credit cards, consider using something like compare top credit card offers in the on-page H1 header.

Notice the change between plural and singular versions of the keywords. Popular CMS programs like WordPress have plug-ins like the SEO Title tag plug-in that make it quite easy to vary your page title and on-page heading.

Go deeper than the competition is going. In some fields, you might be lucky enough to find niche low-volume keyword topics that bring in a couple of searchers each day.

The ongoing maintenance cost of this content has been negligible, but an added bonus for ranking for these long-tail keywords is that some of the people who search for them are people who really care about those topics, and many of them link to our websites. And so my new sites start benefiting from the self-reinforcing effects that older sites benefit from, even though it is still new.

Move away from the commercial keywords. If you stay within a small basket of well known commercial keywords, it is hard to compete with strong competitors that have been targeting them for years. Niche, how-to content that solves a searcher’s problems is likely to build inbound links.

These inbound links boost your domain authority and pass PageRank internally to other pages on your site, which is the general goal of many SEO linkbait projects…some pages are good at building inbound citations, while other pages leverage that link authority and generate revenue.

Buy traffic. If you build high-quality niche content and it does not rank as well as you would like it to then you need to actively market it. Mention it to a couple of popular bloggers in your space and ask them what they think of it. Another option for instantly getting relevant traffic to featured content is to buy targeted ads.

StumbleUpon sells category-based traffic for 5 cents a visitor, but this traffic is nowhere near as potent as search traffic – many of these visitors come and go quickly. You can also buy pay-per-click traffic for your quality content.

If you are buying it for commercial keywords the cost per click can be significant, but if you are trying to promote a quality non-commercial topic that is link-worthy you can often get visitors from search and AdSense ads for less than 25 cents each.

With the ‘buying traffic to build links’ strategy, it can take hundreds of clicks to generate an inbound link, but when you consider how time-consuming and expensive link building is, then $50 or $100 for a good link can be an outright bargain.

How Does Content Marketing Help SEO?

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process by which a website is optimized to perform better and rank higher in relevant searches. Content marketing, on the other hand, is a subset of inbound marketing that involves moving a website visitor through the sales funnel by offering them helpful, interesting, or convincing content pieces.

Although these two may seem like night and day, it is possible to create a content marketing strategy for SEO—that is, a content marketing strategy that helps your website rank better, for more keywords, and reach more customers.

Let’s look a little closer at some content marketing SEO benefits, and learn specific ways that a content marketing plan can give you an edge over your competitors in search engine rankings.

1. More Content = more keyword opportunities

Search engines can’t “see” websites like you and I can. Although we as human beings can look at a website with pictures of pet supplies and understand that it’s an ecommerce site selling leashes, dog bowls, and dog toys, Google has no way of knowing what a website’s purpose is unless those words are written somewhere.

Content marketing allows you to go beyond the small paragraphs of homepage copy and alt text descriptions on photos, where your space for keywords may be limited. Through the use of articles, blog posts, guides, and other written content, you can use more keywords relevant to what your website is about—and what people are searching for.

2. Google prefers longer content

According to one study, pages that rank the highest in Google’s search engine results pages (or SERPs) tend to also have the highest amount of content:

Is longer content always better? Not necessarily. After all, if your article, blog post, or guide goes on and on without making a point or offering any kind of substantial information, visitors will get tired of it and leave, and that can actually hurt your rankings. However, substantial, informative, and detailed content tends to be longer, so it makes sense that it would correlate with the highest rankings.

Think about the last time you searched for an answer or tutorial online. How long did it take you to find a page detailed enough to fully answer your question or help you solve your problem? Chances are, you found this page right away.

As SEO has evolved, it has changed to incorporate factors other than keyword density (that is, the number of times you used the keyword you want to rank for). So by creating substantial content that visitors really appreciate, you have a better chance at taking the top spot than someone who tries to get their keyword usage perfect!

3. Content keeps users on the page longer

Let’s say someone comes to your website from search, can’t find what they are looking for, and leaves right away (without visiting any other pages). This is called a bounce, and the percentage of people who do this on each page on your site is factored into your bounce rate.

Google can factor metrics like bounce rate into your site’s overall SEO profile. If a page has a very high bounce rate, that’s typically a sign that there is something wrong with it—and Google certainly doesn’t want to continue ranking it highly if it’s sending all its visitors right back into the search results. Sometimes content can help you combat a high bounce rate and solve problems like this, especially if it’s done thoughtfully.

4. Unique content can help you achieve new rankings

Finally, there’s one thing that SEO and content marketing often have in common: they focus on finding something that hasn’t been done before and trying to rank highly for it.

By combining keyword research—one of the crucial skills you should learn to improve your SEO—and your content marketing program, you can focus not just on creating a content marketing strategy for SEO gain, but on creating unique, never-before-seen content that exposes your business or website to visitors searching for “long-tail” keywords where you have a far better chance at ranking in the top spot.

As long as the content you’re writing is unique and relevant to your company, these unique pieces can help you occupy additional places in the SERPs, rank for even more keywords, and reach a wider audience.

What is SERPs Marketing?

The page that a search engine returns after a user submit a search query. In addition to organic search results, search engine results pages (SERPs) usually include paid search and pay-per-click (PPC) ads.

Thanks to search engine optimization (SEO), ranking position on a SERP can be highly competitive since users are more likely to click on results at the top of the page. With the launch of schema markup, SERPs are becoming much more complex to try to anticipate user needs.

Search engine results pages are web pages served to users when they search for something online using a search engine, such as Google. The user enters their search query (often using specific terms and phrases known as keywords), upon which the search engine presents them with a SERP.

Every SERP is unique, even for search queries performed on the same search engine using the same keywords or search queries.

This is because virtually all search engines customize the experience for their users by presenting results based on a wide range of factors beyond their search terms, such as the user’s physical location, browsing history, and social settings. Two SERPs may appear identical, and contain many of the same results, but will often feature subtle differences.

How do You Increase Google Ranking?

Money alone can’t buy Google rank, but with a little time and strategy you can improve your position on the search engine results page (SERP) without spending a dime. Here are 10 free ways to improve your Google search rank.

Improve your website’s user experience. According to a study on ranking factors by SEMrush, the top four ranking factors are website visits, time on site, pages per session, and bounce rate. All four of those are directly related to the experience your website is providing your users.

It’s pretty simple: If your website is easy and enjoyable to use and offers valuable information, you’ll get more visitors, who will stay longer on your site and visit more pages, and that will improve your search rank.

Write great content optimized for SEO. Having high-quality content on your website is one of the best ways to increase traffic and improve your search rank. In fact, in a recent poll of marketing professionals, 57% said on-page content development was the most effective SEO tactic.

Make sure your content is mistake-free, keyword-rich, mobile-optimized, written to address the specific needs of your target audience, and includes valuable links to additional internal and external content.

Get more backlinks. Backlinks—links from other sites to yours—are one of the most heavily weighted Google ranking factors. Incoming links to your website content from high-authority domains show your site’s authority, bring in traffic, and improve your search ranking.

Improve your page speed. Google began using mobile page speed as a ranking factor in July, and while it said the “speed update” will only affect a small percentage of sites, it’s still a good idea to make sure your site is as fast as possible—both to improve your search rank and provide a good user experience.

Fix broken links. Having quality links on your website is one of the best ways to boost traffic and establish the authority of your site, but links that bring up a 404 error hurt both your user experience and your search rank. Use a tool like BrokenLinkCheck or Dead Link Checker to find any broken links.

Optimize your images. Optimizing your images is crucial to boosting the speed of your site and making it easier for Google to identify the images on your web pages. Make sure all your website images are compressed, have descriptive filenames, and include alt text.

Use H1 and H2 header tags. Not only do headers make your content more readable and easier to understand for humans and search engines alike, there is a strong correlation between Google search rank and the use of header tags in the body of your content. Header tags are also a great way to show the structure of your content and emphasize your key points.

Optimize for local search. More and more people are using their smartphones to search for businesses “near me.” To improve your chances of having your business show up in relevant local searches, make sure you claim your Google My Business listing, provide relevant content in Google Posts, get your business listed in local directories, and improve your online reputation with great online reviews.

Optimize for voice search. According to a study by Perficient, voice search is no longer growing, but more than 60% of people surveyed still said voice search is their preferred method of asking questions on their smartphone.

Make sure those voice searchers find your business by incorporating likely voice search phrases into your website content—be sure to use full sentences phrased in a natural conversational style rather than single keywords.

Aim for “position zero.” When a user asks a question in Google Search, Google sometimes pulls content from a relevant website and displays it in a special featured snippet or answer box above the #1 search result. Getting content into a featured snippet is a great way to increase traffic (snippets include a link to the page where the content came from), as well as boost the credibility and visibility of your brand.

To increase your chances of having your content selected as a featured snippet by Google, think of likely searches related to your business and pepper your site with clear, authoritative answers.

Can You Pay Google to Rank Higher?

Does Google let companies pay to be at or near the top of search results? The short answer is “no.” The longer answer appears to be “no, but ….” The search engine goliath has been a longtime holdout of paid inclusion, a method other search engines have used to sell companies a guarantee they will be included in search results, although not necessarily ranked well (ranking is still decided by algorithm).

Although Google, which in 2004 declared paid inclusion “evil,” is not selling placement in organic search results, the company has cushioned its search results with ads nestled nearby and is compensated for comparison shopping searches that do not appear in organic listings.

How Long Does it Take to Rank For Keywords?

The common response to this question is obviously, “It depends,” because there are just too many variables to consider: website strength, competition, budget, skills, etc.

Software programs called “Googlebots” (also known as bots, robots, or spiders) move or “crawl” through billions of web pages, collecting and cataloging information that is added to Google’s index of the web. For your webpage to reach Google’s index, the spiders must be able to crawl and read the information on your site.

When you search through Google, you are actually searching the Google index, not the whole Internet. Google uses an algorithm to match your query to the bazillion pages it has on file.

The algorithm considers more than 250 factors, including keywords, titles, and content tags. The algorithm also incorporates PageRank, a separate program that measures each page’s importance according to the amount and quality of traffic from other sites.

When you type a search into Google, pages are selected from the index according to how well they match up to your specific query.

There is no exact formula for placing your website at the top of a Google search. However, the following factors play a key role in the ranking process:

• SEO. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ensures that your website is visible to Googlebots and other indexing programs. This includes things like titles, keywords, headings, and ALT image text.
• Domain age. A web domain less than six months old is considered a “new” site, and therefore less trustworthy or reliable than an older website that has been thoroughly verified. New sites can still be ranked, but rankings are more likely to increase after the six-month window.
• Keyword competition. Words or phrases that are searched often are highly competitive, and more established sites in your industry have a head start on ranking for popular searches. If your site is new, it will be easier to build trust and rankings through keywords with lower levels of competition before moving on to more popular searches.
• Content quality. The Googlebots are designed to identify characteristics like how often new content is published, whether the content is original, as well as the length and overall quality of your posts. Regularly adding new, original, high-quality content to your page will keep the search bots looking at your page and could lead to higher rankings as time passes.
• Clean domain. Google’s algorithm is also designed to spot when websites try to cheat the system with tricks like keyword stuffing or buying inbound links. These schemes may work for a while, but when Google catches on, your site will be penalized. Your ranking will suffer until you correct the problem, which can be a lengthy and difficult process.

So if you’re maintaining your page with good content, keeping your domain clear of any shady shortcuts, and focusing on low-competition keywords that will build your online authority… be patient.

How Many Keywords Are Good For SEO?

You’ve decided which of your pages you want to optimize as organic landing pages, but how many keywords should you optimize each page for?

At the bare minimum, one; some pages may have a singular focus that answers only one query. It’s much more likely that you’ll want to target two or three keywords per page, even if they’re just close variations. Any more than four is a bit crowded; after all, each page only has one title tag and meta description. With a range of keywords per page determined, we can estimate how many keywords we’ll track.

1. Take the number of organic landing pages you’ve chosen
2. Multiply that number by the range of keywords per page (1-4) to get your range, or
3. Multiply the number of organic landing pages by 2.5, the average of the range.

For example, let’s say you’re working on a services site with five unique offerings and three blog posts that you want to target as landing pages. Between these pages and your homepage, you should expect to track 9-36 or about 22 keywords on average.

Of course, rules of thumb are meant to be broken. We work with a manufacturing client that offers ten unique manufacturing products. Without including their blog-focused keywords, we’re tracking 62 keywords for their site.

Other sites might not be as cut and dried. We work with a major news publishing site which often ranks 1st for extremely high-volume keywords due to their backlink profile and industry authority. We actively track over 200 keywords for them, most of which don’t directly correspond to a static landing page such as a product or service page.

Or, if you’re dealing with a site for a 20-year-old digital marketing agency run by some of the biggest nerds in the industry, you might end up with nearly 500 keywords on your tracking list so you can keep an eye on all the various blog posts you’ve published over the years.

How Does Google Rank No 1?

While there’s no way to absolutely guarantee high rankings, this post will look at some strategies anyone can use to seriously increase their chances of claiming that #1 spot.

1. Go niche

Part of succeeding at SEO is understanding the competitive landscape. As a small business owner, you don’t want to be competing with large organizations that have seemingly-unlimited marketing budgets. While there’s always a chance you can outrank them, more likely you’ll just end up wasting your time and money.

This is why it’s so important to go niche. Here’s what I mean by this: Instead of trying to compete with big companies for extremely popular (and usually more general) keywords, drill down and become a “big fish in a small pond.”

Keep in mind, this will often mean shifting the focus of your business from more general to more specific products or services. For instance, instead of exclusively offering general home renovation services, you could consider specializing in “one day bathroom renos” or “custom kitchen makeovers.”

These more specific keyword phrases will likely be much easier to rank for, which will mean you can start ranking that much faster.

2. Choose realistic keywords

Anyone can get the top spot in Google, if they target the right keywords. For instance, if I optimized a page for “blue wubbie nubbie doll,” I could probably grab the top stop in a couple of days. However (and it’s a big however), would I actually want to rank for this phrase? Probably not, considering it’s not even a real product.

My point is this: If you choose keywords that are obscure enough, it’s easy to rank. Of course, we don’t want to rank for obscure keywords; we want to rank for keywords that people are actually looking for. Real queries that someone typed in their browser.

Using tools like Google’s Keyword Planner or KeywordTool.io, look for relevant keywords that have a decent number of searches, but little competition. Once your website has a bit more authority and you’re ranking for a number of easier keywords, you can always move on to more competitive keywords that will earn you more traffic.

3. Optimize each piece of content for your keywords

Once you’ve “gone niche” and have chosen some easier keywords, it’s time to use those keywords in strategic places on your page. While you certainly don’t want to overuse your keywords, it is important to use them in a variety of ways within your content. Most importantly, focus on using them in your:

• URL: For instance, instead of www.yoursite.com/sh8xks6.htm, use www.yoursite.com/your-keywords-here.
• Title tag.
• Headings: H1, H2, etc.
• Alt image tag and image captions, where appropriate.
• Throughout your content.

Keep in mind that Google (and your readers) favor comprehensive content that does a great job of covering the topic at hand. So, while it’s important to use your keywords somewhere in your content, that’s no substitute for writing longer, more in-depth content that really does justice to the topic.

4. Add tons of content to your site

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 88% of B2B companies now use content marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy. This involves using a wide variety of content-type – blog posts, newsletters, webinars, infographics, videos, etc. – to attract potential customers.

If you want to get top rankings in Google, you absolutely must be adding new content to your site regularly. But don’t just add content for content’s sake; add useful, high-quality content that actually provides value to your customers and prospects.

This content will help you boost your rankings in two primary ways. First, more content means more keywords, and therefore more opportunities for Google to return your site in the search results. Second, the more content you have, the more links you generally accumulate. Plus, having lots of content is great for getting visitors to stay on your site longer. Win-win!

5. Acquire links to your site

Links continue to play a critical role in terms of SEO. In fact, according to Moz’s 2015 Search Engine Ranking Factors report, inbound links are the single most important element for achieving high rankings.

Some strategies you can use to acquire links to your site include:

• Adding your site to local business directories and review sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor and Google My Business.
• Guest posting on popular sites in your niche. Even if you don’t get a followed link in your post or bio, the increased visibility you get makes it worthwhile.
• Creating evergreen content that other bloggers and journalists will want to link to (e.g., How-to posts, tutorials, guides, etc.)
• Looking for broken links on industry sites, and requesting that they replace them with links to your site.
• Getting free PR (and mentions and links) from HARO.

Is SEO Content Important For SEO?

Without high-quality content, you can’t realize the full benefits of SEO – relevant and useful content on your website motivates your website visitors to stay for longer, and this can positively impact your search rankings.

Here are some other key benefits of content, in relation to SEO:

• Quality Content Generates High CTR – Google considers your CTR as an important factor to rank your website – the more you get users to click on your links, the greater are your chances of getting better rankings on search engines.
• Quality Content Helps You Generate Backlinks – One of the best SEO strategies is to gain high-quality backlinks from high-authority websites. For Google, high-quality backlinks indicate credibility and trust. The more quality backlinks you have, the higher you are likely to rank on Google.
• Content Allows You to Incorporate Keywords – Quality content is the only way to make sure that you can strategically use your keywords. This will help you compete with other brands from your industry. 
• Quality Content Provides a Great User Experience – SEO involves various strategies such as generating backlinks, writing quality blog posts and using good keywords. It also involves creating a website that has a good structure that users can navigate easily, optimizing your robots.txt files, and writing good meta tags.

Essentially, SEO and content cannot work successfully in isolation. Marketers need to understand that both elements complement each other, so you need to focus on creating great content if you want your rankings to improve.

How do You Get on The First Page of Google Without Paying?

The practice of aligning your website with search engine ranking factors is called search engine optimization (SEO). You do not necessarily search engine-optimize your whole site at once, but rather each individual page on your site. Here’s how to do so:

1. Determine your keywords

First, determine which search queries you want Google to answer with your website pages. These are known as keywords—which, by the way, can be single words OR phrases.

Examples of keywords include:

• “MA tenant laws”
• “salon near me”
• “brunch Boston”
• “air conditioner repair Brighton”
• “how to plug a leaky roof”
• “how to get on the first page of Google”

Each page on your website should target a different set of keywords so that the pages aren’t competing with each other.

The right keywords for your business are those that your ideal customers are typing in to get the products and services they need.

2. Tell Google what keywords you’re using

Google works by crawling the web, ranking the millions of pages that exist, and storing them in an index. When a user performs a search, Google can then scan through its more organized index (rather than the whole web) to quickly come up with relevant results.

Therefore, another important step for showing up on the first page of Google is to make it as easy as possible for Google to scan, index, and retrieve your site. Do this by placing keywords in the following places:

Meta title

Every blog post and page of your website has a meta title. This title appears at the top of your page in the form of a header but also as the title of that page’s listing in search results (depending upon your CMS settings).

Meta description

The meta description is the little blurb that shows up underneath the title in Google’s search results.

In addition to telling Google what your page is about, the meta description quickly tells a searcher what they can expect if they click on your page, increasing the relevant clicks to that page. Therefore the meta description helps Google to put your business on the right first page for the right searches and helps Google searchers to keep it there.

URL

Your URL consists of your domain name (such as wordstream.com), followed by a forward slash, followed by text separated by dashes. 

Including keywords in your URL will help Google more quickly identify what your page is about. Also, the URL appears in between the title and meta description in search results. A clean URL that matches the title of the page is more appealing and trustworthy to users, and better suited for first-page appearances.

Alt tags

Google can only see images if the image has a text alternative (aka alt tag). If your alt tag includes keywords, Google can detect further relevancy of that page and feel more comfortable putting you on its first page of search results.

3. Write for humans

Of course, the body of your page’s content is the most important place to include the keywords for which you’re trying to rank. However, it is crucial that these keywords are not systematically and excessively inserted but naturally incorporated. In fact, Google can now detect keyword stuffing and if it does it will place you far, far from the first page of its results.

The key to getting on the first page of Google is providing useful, trustworthy, easy-to-read, but informative content that will keep your target audience on your pages and coming back for more. And conversationally sharing the knowledge already in your head is both free and easy.

Just remember that if you want to rank on the first page of Google for a particular keyword search, your page needs to provide the information, and not just the keywords, that users are trying to obtain when they type that search into Google.

4. Emphasize location

Another free way to get your website pages on the first page of Google is to target location-based queries. Make sure your website clearly indicates your city and/or geographic area, via your contact page and potentially also through blog posts and services pages. That way, when people search: “your industry” + ”your city”, Google will pick up that information and show your business as a “near me” search result.

Even if a user does not search using a specific location, Google will still serve up geographically relevant results based on their IP address, so local SEO is not only free, but always important (even during a pandemic).

5. Optimize for mobile

You will not find a website at the top of a Google search that is not responsive. Consumers now use phones and tablets more than computers and laptops, and the majority of local searches are performed on mobile devices. As a result, Google favors mobile-friendly websites. In fact, all sites are now indexed by mobile-first indexing.

Responsive is ideal, as your website will adapt to any size screen and maintain functionality. However, if you don’t have a responsive website, there are adjustments you can make to your site to ensure the most seamless experience for a mobile user.

6. Focus on user experience

Being mobile-friendly isn’t enough for a website. It must also be appealing and user-friendly. A website with intuitive navigation, clear calls to action, and answers to your visitors’ most immediate questions will keep visitors there longer and coming back later—which Google will notice and, in turn, rank you higher. The higher you rank, the more traffic you will get to your site, and the more likely you are to show up on the first page.

What Are The Different Ways in Which a Company Can Improve Its Search Engine Rankings

Follow these suggestions to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) and watch your website rise the ranks to the top of search engine results.

1. Publish Relevant Content

Quality content is the number one driver of your search engine rankings and there is no substitute for great content. Quality content created specifically for your intended user increases site traffic, which improves your site’s authority and relevance.

Keywords

Identify and target a specific keyword phrase for each page on your website. Think about how your reader might search for that specific page with search terms like:

• masters in engineering management
• what is biomedical engineering?
• title IX resources
• northern lights
• how to apply for scholarships?
• application deadline

Multiple Keyword Phrases

It is very difficult for a webpage to achieve search engine rankings for multiple keyword phrases—unless those phrases are very similar. A single page may be able to rank for both “biomedical engineering jobs” and “biomedical engineering careers”. Ranking for “student affairs” and “dean of students” or “gender discrimination” and “violence reporting procedures” with a single page is unlikely.

If you want to rank for multiple keywords phrases with your website, you will need to make a separate webpage for each keyword phrase you are targeting.

Placing Keywords

Once your keyword phrase is chosen for a given page, consider these questions:

1. Can I use part or all of the keyword phrase in the page URL (by using keywords in folders)?
2. Can I use part or all of the keyword phrase in the page title?
3. Can I use part or all of the keyword phrase in page headings and subheadings?

Answering yes to these questions can improve your search engine ranking. Be natural and user-friendly, though. For instance, you do not want the word “engineering” to show up three or more times in the URL or have the phrase Northern Lights repeated in the page title and every heading. Readability and usability still trump search engine optimization.

Content

Beyond page URL, title, and headings, content is most influential on search engine rankings. Repeat your keyword phrase several times throughout the page—once or twice in the opening and closing paragraphs, and two to four more times throughout the remaining content.

Don’t forget to use bold, italics, heading tags (especially an H1), and other emphasis tags to highlight these keyword phrases—but don’t overdo it. You still want your language and writing style to read naturally. Never sacrifice good writing for SEO. The best pages are written for the user, not for the search engine.

2. Update Your Content Regularly

You’ve probably noticed that we feel pretty strongly about content. Search engines do, too. Regularly updated content is viewed as one of the best indicators of a site’s relevancy, so be sure to keep it fresh. Audit your content on a set schedule (semesterly for example) and make updates as needed.

3. Metadata

When designing your website, each page contains a space between the <head> tags to insert metadata, or information about the contents of your page. If you have a CMS site originally produced by the UMC web team will have pre-populated this data for you. However, it is important for you to review and update Metadata as your site changes over time.

Title Metadata

Title metadata is responsible for the page titles displayed at the top of a browser window and as the headline within search engine results. It is the most important metadata on your page.

For those with a CMS website, the web team has developed an automated system for creating the meta title for each webpage based on your page title. This adds to the importance of using well-thought-out page titles rich with keyword phrases.

Description Metadata

Description metadata is the textual description that a browser may use in your page search return. Think of it as your site’s window display—a concise and appealing description of what is contained within, with the goal of encouraging people to enter. A good meta description will typically contain two full sentences. Search engines may not always use your meta description, but it is important to give them the option.

Keyword Metadata

Keyword metadata is rarely if ever used to tabulate search engine rankings. However, you should already know your keyword phrases, so it doesn’t hurt to add them into your keyword metadata. You’ll want to include a variety of phrases. As a general rule, try to keep it to about 3-7 phrases with each phrase consisting of 1-4 words. A great example would be “computer science degree.”

4. Have a link-worthy site

Focus on creating relevant links within the text. Instead of having “click here” links, try writing out the name of the destination. “Click here” has no search engine value beyond the attached URL, whereas “Michigan Tech Enterprise Program” is rich with keywords and will improve your search engine rankings as well as the ranking of the page you are linking to.

Always use descriptive links by linking keywords—it not only improves search engine optimization, but also adds value to your readers, including those with disabilities or who are using screen readers.

5. Use alt tags

Always describe your visual and video media using alt tags, or alternative text descriptions. They allow search engines to locate your page, which is crucial—especially for those who use text-only browsers or screen readers.

How to Rank Higher on Google Organically

Having your web pages rank high in Google’s organic search listings for important keywords can be incredibly valuable for driving traffic to your site. And while Google is constantly tweaking their search engine algorithm, here are some fundamental strategies to get you started on improving your organic search engine rankings.

1. Define a Keyword List

It’s unreasonable to assume that you will pull top rank in Google for every keyword relating to your industry. Your goal should be to secure high organic rankings for your most desired keywords. This is an exercise that will take the effort of both marketing and management.

Think about how people would search for your products and services, make a list of these keywords, and check the traffic and competition for each term with a tool like BrightEdge or Google’s Keyword Planner.

Keywords with high volume and low to medium competition are the sweet spot — they have high traffic potential and are easier to rank for.

2. Good Content Will Win Out in Organic Rankings

Before you dig into some of the more technical ways to improve SEO ranking, always remember that writing high-quality content that attracts interest and compels visitors to share it and link back to it is vital. Good content has the best chance of being viral content, and Google rewards content virality heavily in its rankings algorithm.

3. Create Cornerstone Pages

If you have 10 pages relating to the same set of keywords, Google will have a hard time determining which page is relevant. Instead, merge your content into a single cornerstone page. With one authoritative cornerstone page on a specific topic, there is no SEO confusion, and you should rank higher.

4. Work Your Keywords and Related Variants in Page Content

The best way to rank for a keyword is to use it. You should include important keywords early in your page titles, headlines, and body text, since early placement can be a signal of relevance. You should use your focus keywords often throughout your copy — but never at the expense of good writing.

Google’s algorithm has become wary of “keyword stuffing” and penalizes pages that use keywords excessively, in ways that interfere with the reading experience.

A good way to avoid being penalized for “keyword stuffing” is to read your copy aloud — if your keyword use sounds unnatural, you may get flagged for stuffing. To correct this, you can replace your focus keyword with secondary keywords you want the blog to rank for.

5. Optimize Your Page Titles

The <title> HTML tag defines a web page’s title and is meant to be a concise description of that page’s content. It is the first line of hyperlinked text Google displays in their organic search results, and it is what appears in the top frame of most web browsers for that page and in tabs.

Google’s algorithm considers this to be a crucial on-page SEO element. When you write your page titles, keep them less than 70 characters, since any text beyond that will be cut off when listed in Google’s organic results.

You should include your important keywords in the title, preferably in the beginning. If you have extra space, consider including your company at the end to increase brand awareness.

6. Write Meta Descriptions that Drive Clicks

The <meta name= description content= > HTML tag is meant to be a concise explanation of a web page’s content. Google displays your meta description beneath the page title in their organic results. Meta descriptions aren’t nearly as important to Google’s ranking algorithm as page titles — rather, their function is to drive clicks from users.

People read descriptions as a preview of your page and use it to determine if your content is worth visiting. Therefore, you need to provide a clear value proposition about what they’ll gain by visiting your page and reading your content. Consider using words that inspire action like “learn more,” “find out,” or “get…”

You should keep your meta descriptions 150 characters since Google won’t display text beyond that. You should also include target keywords in your text, since any words matching a user’s search query will be displayed in bold.

7. Use Keyword Variations as Anchor Text for Internal Linking

Anchor text is the visible words and characters that hyperlinks display when linking to another page. Using descriptive, relevant anchor text helps Google determine what the page being linked to is about. When you use internal links (links on web pages that point to other pages on the same web site), you should use anchor text that is a close variation of your target keywords for that page, instead of phrases like “click here” or “download here”.

But at the same time, avoid overuse of exact match keywords. Using close variations will help you improve your organic Google rankings for more keywords.

8. Don’t Forget About ALT Tags

ALT tags are HTML elements used to specify alternative text to display when the element they are applied to (such as images) can’t be rendered. ALT tags are a signal for Google’s ranking algorithm, so when you have images and other elements on your web pages, be sure to always use a descriptive ALT tag with targeted keywords for that page.

9. Your URLs Matter

Search engines prefer URLs that are readable for humans, so keep yours clean and relevant to the page. Avoid blocks of numbers and special characters. Shorter URLs perform better in Google search rankings than longer ones, so keep that in mind when you architect your site. Keep the slashing to a minimum. You should also include keywords in your URL names, and try to place them closer to your domain name.

10. Optimize Your Site for Mobile

In 2015, Google first announced that it would be using mobile friendliness as a ranking signal. This triggered the infamous “Mobilegeddon,” as brands scrambled to optimize the mobile versions of their sites.

Since then, Google has been gradually increasing the importance of mobile-friendliness in its rankings — in a more recent announcement, it said it will index the entire web with a mobile-first model by September 2020.
Below are some tips to optimize your website for mobile:

• Test your site using Google’s mobile-friendly tool
• Design for touch — fingers come in all sizes and can easily make incorrect taps
• Make your CTA buttons accessible to mobile users
• Redesign your pop-ups for mobile devices
• Enable Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
• Implement caching
• Compress your images to improve loading time
• Use heat maps and mouse tracking tools to understand how people user your website on mobile and make optimizations accordingly

11. Increase Your Social Presence

Social signals are impacting organic search engine rankings and many industry experts believe that will only increase. If you haven’t already, consider setting up some social media pages such as LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook, and start engaging with your audience there.

14. Employ a Link Building Strategy

Link building is a catchall term for the practice of acquiring new links to your site from external domains. Beyond creating great content people want to share, guest blogging and asking webmasters from authoritative sites relevant to your business to link back to your pages are great ways to build links.

Read Also: Top 30 Content Marketing Tools

The higher the domain authority of the site you receive backlinks from, the more your ranking will increase. These sites, in effect, pass authority from their site to yours through those backlinks. SEOs often refer to this phenomenon as “link juice.” You can use a domain authority checker to evaluate which sites can pass the most authority to your site.

Use relevant keywords as the anchor text for your backlinks, as this will help send signals to Google that your pages are relevant for those terms.

15. Track The Visitors and Leads Your SEO Is Driving

Securing top organic search engine rankings is only half the battle. To prove your value and optimize your results, it’s important to measure the impact of your efforts on web site traffic and lead/sales generation. Google Search Console can give you important insight into how your site is functioning and identify potential errors you should correct.

A tool like Google Analytics is helpful for measuring changes in search traffic as well as tracking visitors’ interactions with your website that is a direct result of SEO. You can set up Google Analytics reporting to measure how well your organic traffic is converting to subscribers, leads, and customers.

While marketers often track the online conversions organic search is driving, many fail to track call conversions. As a result, they’re not getting credit for all the revenue their optimizations are driving. Call tracking and conversation intelligence tools can tie leads and sales back to the web pages that drove them. This allows you to report all the conversions your best SEO pages are driving — both online and over the phone.

Conclusion

There is no surefire way to get a #1 ranking on Google. However, targeting the right keywords and audience can significantly increase your chances. Follow that up by creating and promoting tons of well-optimized content, and you’re good to go! Those top rankings could happen much sooner than you think.