No idea how to get ranked on Google? Well, let me help you. In this article, I will explain what you can do to get a higher ranking and get organic traffic from Google.
Organic Traffic – Best traffic source
Why should you even get ranked on Google? Well, because Google is a search engine and you will get new visitors to your website organically. How often do you use Google? Me personally probably daily. Search engine traffic is also one of the best traffic sources you can have because people search so much on it and it’s basically for free.
Let’s take this article as an example: If this article will rank for “How to get ranked on Google”, you will have typed that sentence in, and if you land on this page, I know that you are truly interested in this topic.
Let’s say I share this article on Social Media to 10k followers: Not all of those 10k followers will be interested in this topic.
What I am trying to say is, search engine traffic is very targeted.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and that is what you will have to get into if you want to get ranked on Google. SEO can be split into 2 different aspects:
- On-page SEO
How to optimize your website and content - Off-page SEO
How to show Google that your website is relevant
One of the most important aspects of SEO is to find a keyword you want to rank for. Let’s stay with the example of this article. I would like this article to rank for “how to get ranked on Google”.
How do you find keywords to use and how do you decide which one to pick?
Free keyword research tools
The best way to find keywords are tools like Googles Keyword Planner. You basically start off with a rough topic and the tool will list you related keywords and how much traffic and competition there is for a certain phrase.
This is where it gets tricky. Of course, you would like to rank for keywords with the most traffic right? Well yes… but it’s also going to be very very very difficult to rank for those terms and it is very unrealistic. You have no chance to compete with those other websites in most cases.
How to get ranked on Google with long-tail keywords
These are the type of keywords you want to use for SEO optimizations. Long-tail keywords like “how to get ranked on Google” don’t have as much traffic as shorter keywords, but it is much easier to rank for them because you have less competition. So, when researching keywords what you want to do is find the keyword with the most traffic but lowest competition (also what I usually look for are phrases that don’t sound weird, but more like a sentence).
On-page SEO guide
The Google algorithm changes every year and the rules you should follow to rank on the first-page change a lot. Now, for on-page SEO some simple rules:
1. Try to use your keyword towards the start of your title tag
2. Have SEO friendly URLs that include your target keyword
3. Include your keyword in the first 100 words of your article
4. Include your keyword inside, or synonym, in a H1 tag
5. Include your keyword at least once inside a H2 or H3 subheading
6. Use at least 1 multimedia type in your posts
7. Optimize your images (use the alt tags)
8. Include at least 1 outbound link
9. Include at least 2 or 3 internal links
10. Publish long content
If you have a WordPress website, I can recommend the Yoast SEO plugin. It’s free and it will help you to point out what exactly you can do to improve your on-page SEO score.
Off-page SEO guide
Soo, Google doesn’t just look at the content of your website, but also on what other websites it gets mentioned. Let’s say someone else writes an article on their website and then put in a link to yours because you wrote a great article about a specific topic. That shows Google that your content is share-worthy and that’s good. There is a lot more to it than that and the thing with off-page SEO is if you do stupid things it can also hurt your site. That’s why I usually focus more on the content and want my off-page SEO to be built organically.
The easiest and safest things you can do are create great content, share it on Social Media and Forums to get some visitors, encourage visitors to leave comments, network with other bloggers in your niche, and maybe make a deal to write a blog post for each other (guest blogging) and so on.
Best keyword research tool
As already mentioned you can use Keyword Planner for free to start off with your research. But as you dive deeper you will see, the better your research the easier it will be to rank. There are also sooo many tools out there and I cannot tell you which one is the best one. What I can tell you is about the one I am using and was the best one so far 🙂
I am using Jaaxy and it is great because it gives you more detailed insight than Keyword planner. The Jaaxy lite version is included if you are a member of Wealthy Affiliate.
If you want to go even deeper with your SEO know-how, here you can find Googles guide: Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide
How to get ranked on Google’s first page?
Basically you have to find a good keyword with no competition, optimize your content and get a few links from bigger sites than yours. I spent a lot of time in the past 6 years trying out different SEO strategies but what I didn’t like was, that I focused too much on optimizing the content. I’d rather write like I want and not for search engines. And you should do the same. Write for your audience, create qualitative content and your rank on Google will also improve by doing that.
My process for SEO is as follows:
- Find one long-tail keyword about the topic I want to write about
- Try to use that keyword naturally in the blog post
- Try to fulfill the Yoast SEO checklist
- Share the fresh article on Social Media
Currently I am not worrying about off-page SEO too much, I’d rather focus on the content 🙂
Great breakdown of tips and tricks on SEO and google rankings…you took a complicated topic and made it more accessible, which I appreciate. Sounds like community is a key part of gaining visibility – getting people to comment, interact and publish about your site. I love that you write what you want and not for search engines – search engine writing can be really annoying to read (and really obvious to the reader!)
Yeah SEO can sound very complex, but with a bit of effort you can increase traffic from Google and if you have any kind of Website this is the best kind of traffic.
How long does it take to get ranked on Google and by using these ranking tips to get to the first page?
Does it take a week? No. Does it take a month? Depends. The first question is how old your domain is. New domains will need at least 6 months to get recognition from Google. But in general, SEO is a monthly thing. Improve your SEO monthly and check the results after a month. Aaaaand repeat. After 3 to 6 months with the right SEO tactics, you should be able to get ranked even on the first page of Google.
Would you recommend to buy a keyword research tool immediately when starting out with SEO or can you just get away with using the free tools?
I would recommend to start off with the free tools so that you can learn how to use them. Once you have enough knowledge and you notice, that the tools don’t give you all the information that you would like, start using the paid tools like Jaaxy. Knowledge is power. And that’s basically what you pay for: more detailed information easily accesible.