5 Tips for Ranking 1st on Google

Your ultimate goal in using SEO should be to get on to the first Search Engine Results Page (SERP) while still providing the relevant information that users need. So here are 5 tips from us on how to use SEO techniques to rank higher on Google, and get to the top.

If you want to know more about how SEO works beforehand, click here. If not, keep on reading.

1. Use Keywords

The first step to doing this is ensuring that your content contains the relevant keywords and phrases that ensure readability for the search engine. There are SEO tools available online such as Seobility and Ahrefs that will help you to find the popular keywords people search for relating to the content in your own page.

You can also find them by inserting your own words in to the Google search engine, and taking note of what the automatic predictions are. These are based off the information taken from real life searches and trends. This means that the predictions before you show what most users would type in when looking for related content; so take these predictions, and try to incorporate them into your page wherever they are relevant.

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Another way to find these words is by looking at the SERP itself. By scrolling to the bottom, you could find other search results related to your topic. These too are based off search trends, and thus will become useful once integrated into your own page’s content. Take a look at the examples above, maybe they’ll look familiar.

Upon finding these, select a few keywords that you can incorporate into your own web page; as using the related ones that are already popular will increase the probability of your site being found. Place them in your Title tag and Meta Description so that users will be able to understand what your page is about, and then be drawn into clicking it.

Using these words in the alternative text when uploading any images will also increase the probability of people finding it when they search for similar things; making it more likely that they click on it.

However, over-filling your page with keywords in a way that the average human will not be able to find the content discernible will do more bad than good. While many may think that using these keywords as fillers wherever they can is clever, the advanced search engines know better, and could penalize your page, or even block it completely depending on the severity of your offense.

2. Look Appealing

It is important to make your Title tag attractive, while being practical and direct. Users want fast answers for their queries, so choose a title that tells them exactly what you’re going to give them, and just how fast. Research shows that adding numbers and implications that the solution is quick and easy will make people more likely to click on your web page. Take a look at the title of this article.

The first few sentences or images of your page determine whether a user will stay, or leave. Filling your introduction with unnecessary jargon will make users think that you don’t have what they want. Which is why we started this article telling you exactly what we could give you; resulting in you sticking around long enough to read this far.

This can be done using Brian Dean’s OBP technique; start off with your Outcome, then tell your readers what they could Benefit from reading on, and finally, provide a Preview of the content so that they understand the gist of what you’re about to show them. After seeing this, your reader will make a better judgement as to whether they should stay on your page or not.

Research also shows that users are more likely to stay on pages that they find visually attractive. So make sure your pages have a balanced amount of text and visuals like colorful graphs, images and videos so that users are lured into staying on.

3. Connect

This can be done by building links; of which there are different types that affect your ranking on the search results- starting with back links.

Backlinks are created when a website links your site in one of its pages; directing their audience towards your post. This is most effective in the case of editorials, so aim to have your content promoted by them.

By referring other users to you, your article becomes more popular and is more likely to be searched for. The search engine gathers this information and boosts your ranking.

You can attempt to get people to backlink to your site by promoting your own work; build relationships in the community and gain the trust of other users without spamming them with your content, and give them reasons to direct their audience towards you.

Trust plays an important role in the probability of them using your web page as a backlink. If users do not find your content reliable, or find that you’re overstuffing it with irrelevant information and an unnecessary amount of keywords, they are less likely to direct their own audience towards you.

Next, we have internal linking. This is when you link pages of yours to another page on your own site; redirecting the readers from each of them to one commonplace. Upon seeing these connections, the search engine gathers that this destination page is of some importance, and thus raises your ranking.

Lastly, we have external links. These are links on your page that directs your audience to a different domain. While this may not seem like it will help your own page, research shows that pages which use external links tend to rank higher than those that don’t. 

You can do this by entering your keywords into the search engine. Any other pages on the SERP are considered to be your competitors. Go through these pages, and find ones that are relevant so you can feature them in your own content.

4. Be up to date

As mentioned in our previous article on how SEO actually works, search engines like Google also categorize pages into their ranks based on relevancy. This is not just related to what your content is about, but also to how relevant it is today. There is a negative relationship between the value of information and time, meaning that information is the most valuable in the stage of its initial discovery. For example, a tutorial on how to master SEO which was published in 2015 is hardly useful now.

Thus, making sure that the information on your page is up to date is important to remain relevant. If you have any old pages, take the opportunity to update them- reviving them, and making them useful once again. 

5. Encourage Engagement

From your title to your content, the elements of your page should encourage your audience to interact with it, perhaps by commenting on it or by sharing your work with other people.

The search engine sees all these interactions and understands that the page must be of some importance in order to gain an active and possibly growing community, and so it gives it a higher ranking. 

You can entice readers through CTAs, let them know that you want to interact with them. Motivate them further by engaging with them yourself; reply to the comments so the process doesn’t seem pointless. For example, you could end your article by saying something like:

Did you try any of these 5 tips on how to rank 1st on Google? If so, let us know how it worked out in the comment section below!