Google is the world’s most popular search engine, with over a billion users and thousands of searches per second. Due to its popularity among internet users, every content creator, writer, or marketer strives to make their content rank high on the platform.
When your video or written content ranks high on Google, it’ll take the top spots on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), giving your content more reach, visibility, clicks, and conversions. However, getting on Google’s first page requires a decent amount of work.
We’ll do a quick rundown of the 5 best ways to optimise your content for quality Google rankings to make them stand out from the crowd and expand your reach.
1. Research Keywords Thoroughly
Good rankings don’t happen by chance – you must put in the effort. One of the most important measures to boost your ranking is keyword research. When people enter queries on Google, they enter keywords. So, if you need your content up top, you must add the most searched words and phrases on Google to it.
Interestingly, finding the right keywords for your website to rank is not as difficult as it sounds. You’ll find free keyword research tools, including Google Search Console, Semrush, and Google Keyword Planner, which effectively find high-ranking keywords for SEO. You can also optimise your content using keywords based on users’ search intent and trends.
However, while keywords are great, you want to avoid keyword stuffing, which can make your content difficult to read by people and Google’s algorithm. According to Atlas SEO, using your target keyword once every 250 words is a good practice.
2. Pay Attention to On-Page SEO
Another effective way to make your content visible on Google is to include additional keywords throughout the article or video. These include meta titles, meta descriptions, headings (H1, H2, and H3), alt texts, image file names, and images.
Adding relevant keywords in various parts of the content will boost it further. This is because the information provided in your meta title and meta description can instantly attract readers and keep them reading. Additionally, image-rich content will rank well and generate traffic back to your website because Google loves visuals.
3. Ensure Your Site Works Properly
Ranking high on Google doesn’t stop at creating engaging and optimised content. You must ensure your website is optimised for users. This is because Google uses bots to crawl your submitted website to test its speed, accessibility, and content readability.
So, have technical SEO practices in place to ensure your website’s load speed is optimal and user-friendly. Optimising for mobile users also helps because virtually everyone has a smartphone these days.
Doing so helps the site rank high and reduces the website’s bounce rate, which measures how many site visitors open it and exit almost immediately. Ultimately, you’ll be able to build more engagement, deliver your content to more users, and let Google know that readers consider content helpful. That way, you won’t lose traffic and potential sales.
4. Leverage Local SEO
If you’re a business owner targeting customers in your location and its environs, local SEO is an effective way to stand out from the crowd. When you create a work profile on Google My Business and add information about your location, Google will recommend you to people who need your product or service nearby.
For instance, if you run a beauty or makeup business in Leeds, having your business name and address on Google My Business will let you pop up easily when someone searches for “Makeup artist in Leeds.”
This is a cost-effective way of marketing your business. However, you can run sponsored ads or marketing campaigns to achieve better results.
5. Perfect Your Link Building
Both internal and external links are crucial to ranking high on Google. Internal links help you index some of your existing content and make them easily discoverable from searches. The more internal links you have in your piece, the better Google follows and prioritises them.
Backlinks or external links are also effective in helping content rank high because they strengthen the content by showing readers they are valuable. In other words, backlinks endorse your website content as authoritative. Notable external sites to link to include Forbes, Investopedia, and Wikipedia. You can also support facts and data with links from Statista, Google Finance, and Yahoo Finance.
Final Thoughts
Ranking your content high on Google requires multiple approaches, including on-page and technical SEO, keyword research, and other activities.
Considering the intricacies of the various processes, you may require expert help. In that case, you can find digital marketing agencies with a team of professionals to help build and manage your online presence.
