Imagine deciding on a blog post title and writing a great article. You want your post to attract, engage, and delight your target audience. You envision your article appearing as number one on the search engine results page (SERP) when users type in certain keywords in the search bar.
But days after posting your article on your blog, the visitors aren’t trickling in. There’s no traffic to your post. The article doesn’t even appear on the first or second page of Google.
Nobody wants their article buried in the search engine pages where visitors don’t bother to click. Everyone wants visibility for their blog content, and that means increasing your page ranking until the post appears on the first SERP.
There are several ways to increase your website’s page ranking. In this post, we’ll be discussing eight:
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#1 Learn About Google PageRank
PageRank is an algorithm Google uses to measure the importance of a page and rank it on the SERP. Although Google updates its algorithm almost every day, they only announce major updates and don’t reveal the algorithm’s inner workings. This method ensures that every site has a fair chance of ranking for quality content.
Google has rolled out several updates like Hummingbird, Penguin, Pigeon, and Panda. To keep track of all these, you can use the Google Webmaster tool or go through Moz’s database on the Google algorithm update history.
#2 Check Your Website’s Ranking
Before you improve your PageRank, you need to know your overall site ranking. There are two major things to check:
Site Speed
If you’ve done everything right – used the best meta description, appropriate title tags, and awesome on-page search engine optimization (SEO) – but your website is slow, the search engine algorithms will punish you. They’ll ensure that it never rises in rank. Use Google PageSpeed Insight or Pingdom Website Speed Test to check your site’s speed and ensure it meets the algorithms’ criteria.
Site Health
What’s your organic traffic growth? Has the number of visitors dropped or increased? Endeavor to find out how algorithm updates have affected your website’s health and make adjustments if needed.
#3 Increase Your Page Loading Speed
Your page load speed determines visitors’ response and search engine ranking.
People don’t like a slow website. They’d rather leave and look for the information elsewhere. The result is an increase in your site’s bounce rate and inability to retain visitors, eventually killing the traffic to your site and negatively affecting SEO. Besides, Google wants websites that provide value quickly to users. A slow-loading page will hurt your site’s ranking since most visitors would abandon it.
It’s best to optimize your server response time and page speed. There are online services and apps to test your site’s speed. They could even show you how fast it loads in different locations in the world. You can increase your page speed by reducing image size, minimizing the number of plug-ins, and enabling browser caching.
#4 Improve the Click Through Rate (CTR)
Would you want users to click on the page title and visit your website? The Click-through rate is the ratio of people who click on a link.
When the post title appears as part of the search engine results, people can decide to read the article if it catches their interest and promises to provide the information they require. It’s essential to make your title tag persuasive and catchy to attract visitors to your page. You can make your title:
- Short – Google truncates most titles after fifty to sixty characters. Either make your title short or put the most important keywords at the beginning.
- Elicit curiosity – When people are curious, they’d want to click through and read the article’s content.
- Use power words – Power words make your title catchy and connect with people’s emotions. They’re a vital tool for emotional content marketing.
#5 Write High-Quality Articles
For a moment, put yourself in the shoes of your website visitors. Why should they keep coming back to your site? What information is so relevant, valuable, and timely that will draw them back?
Creating high-quality, engaging, authoritative, and relevant content is a must if you want your page to be among the first five in the SERP. Fresh, enthralling, problem-solving information keeps visitors longer on your page.
Not only will it increase the page dwell time, but it will also boost your site’s traffic and ensure that users keep coming back. You may also use visual storytelling to engage customer’s emotions and build brand loyalty.
These elements are vital ranking factors that can push your page to the search engine’s first page.
#6 Use the Appropriate Keywords
Keywords are search queries that users input in the search bar when they visit Google. To optimize your page with keyword phrases, you’d need to think about what users want and how they’ll view your page or want their search queries answered.
Your keyword phrases should be specific to your business, conversational, and placed in strategic positions. A website concentrating on research paper writing services would focus on keywords like education, research paper writing, and essay writing.
They could even use a long-tail keyword like “dissertation writing service for students.” Long-tail keywords are more specific. They’re focused on what your business can provide and identify the customer’s needs in detail.
You can add them to your title, URL, headers, and articles. They can also appear in your About Us, FAQs, Contact, Services, and Home Page.
#7 Optimize Images
Having pictures and other images is essential to retaining visitors because they make your content engaging.
But, they’re not enough. You should optimize images on your page to improve SEO ranking.
First, you’d need to consider file format and size. Is the format easily accessible? Is the size small enough to ensure fast page load time, yet large enough to maintain good image quality on small and large screens?
Another aspect for consideration is how you name your images. Search engines identify images through various processes, including the names and descriptions or captions. You can strategically add keywords to the image title and caption for optimization purposes.
#8 Update Existing Content
A blog post’s shelf life spans only a few years. After two years, the article becomes ancient and could easily be outdated since there might be fresh content it doesn’t capture. At this point, organic traffic from search engines will begin to reduce.
If your page isn’t ranking for its target keyword or its ranking has dropped, it’s best to update or rewrite it. You can refresh outdated sections and add trending, quality content like videos and infographics.
Alternatively, update your posts periodically to keep them ever fresh and increase or maintain their position on the search engine page.
Conclusion
Search engine optimization and page ranking are here to stay. With the right page ranking methods, you don’t need to worry about a rank drop or being punished by the Google algorithm. Instead, you can get more organic traffic for your target keywords.
If you’re just starting with site and page ranking, take these steps one at a time.
Understand the search engine algorithms properly and know where your site ranks. Ensure your site speed, site health, and page speed meet the recommended criteria.
Then you move to content creation. Your posts should have catchy informative titles that attract visitors and promise to answer their search queries. Your content should have high quality, be engaging, relevant, authoritative, and fresh.
You’d need to add long-tail keywords to help visitors understand that you’re solving their specific problems. You’d also need to optimize images to help Google properly identify them and keep your articles engaging. Finally, constant updates will ensure that your posts are ever fresh and have recent, relevant information.
Do you want your page to be among the first five on the SERP? Follow these eight tips and watch your page ranking improve.
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