How to rank my website on top positions of Google

Welcome to this first article dear readers. Today I bring you some tips for those neophytes and interested people who often wonder “How to rank my website on Google”.

Let’s start with some facts.

Most people or search engine users trust Google. How many times have you heard someone say: “Just Google it”? People do more than 3.5 billion searches every day on Google. But even more interesting is that 75% of them do not advance beyond the first page of search results:

The first page of Google’s search results is like the “golden goose” of all SEOs, Webmasters, and anyone who has a website. And this is no more and no less than due to the exponential increase in profits that a site on the first page of the search engines can offer.

It is obvious that the click-through rate (CTR) drops drastically beyond the first three search results. This is why SEOs are constantly striving to get a website on the first page of Google.

A higher ranking in the SERPs helps your target audience discover your website. But why is it so important for a website to be present on the first page of Google?

Let’s find out.

Google Rankings: Why does it need all your attention?

As they say: “The best place to hide a corpse is on the second page of Google. ?

This phrase, although you may laugh at first, can be the downfall of many online businesses. It basically means that when someone searches for any information, they will primarily focus on the first page of Google’s SERPs.

Consequently, they are less likely to click on the second or third page to find relevant information.

In fact, a CTR study conducted by Advanced Web Ranking revealed that the first three search results get 55% of all clicks (as shown in the image).

This clearly shows how important it is for your website to have the highest possible search engine ranking. It is crucial to increase brand awareness and attract more organic traffic.

In this day and age, it is crucial for all businesses, big or small, to have a strong digital presence. Developing a unique product or service is no longer enough.

Your company website is a crucial marketing tool that can be used to convey effective information about your brand. You can use it to attract potential customers and turn them into loyal brand advocates (which in advertising is called evangelizing).

However, your website’s web design is useless unless it receives substantial traffic.

A strong presence on the first page of Google ensures that your website is visible to your target audience. If it ranks high in the SERPs, users are more likely to click on your result.

Since they are actively searching for information related to your brand, product, or service, they are more likely to convert into customers.

A high ranking on the first page of Google also indicates that the search engine perceives your domain as a reliable and quality source of information. It acts as a seal of approval and reinforces the credibility of your brand.

Rank my website at the First page of Google: How to get there?

To “place” your website on the first page of Google you can choose between two different ways:

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – Refers to strategies that aim to increase your domain’s search engine ranking organically.
• Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) – Often referred to as SEM, with this approach, you pay search engines through a bidding system for a prominent position in the SERPs.

PPC campaigns are extremely effective, albeit extremely expensive, at increasing traffic to a website in a short period of time. However, these ads are often perceived as less trustworthy by users.

Therefore, if you would like your website to be on the first page of Google, SEO is a more effective approach with long-term benefits.

Before we delve into SEO, let’s first try to understand how search engines like Google operate.

Simply put, Google uses spiders or web crawlers to search the internet and find new web pages. These web pages are stored in databases called indexes.

When a user enters a search query, Google searches these indexes for the most relevant web pages. Google has introduced several updates to its algorithms such as Hummingbird and RankBrain to make its search results more and more relevant.

Recently, Google launched the implementation of BERT, announcing it as “a new way of understanding SERPs”. This is just another step forward in its goal to make results more and more refined and relevant to the user.

As a result, it often becomes increasingly difficult to secure and maintain a high position in search engines.

How To Improve Your Google Rankings? How does SEO work?

SEO is a set of techniques and tools that focus on driving organic traffic to your website from search engines. The main objective is to bring your website to the top of the first page of Google making it sustainable over time.

As a result, your domain will increase its visibility, as well as that of your brand, and you will attract more potential customers.

Quality content is often said to be “king” or the heart of SEO. Search engines have a preference for websites that offer valuable content. When you regularly publish meaningful and relevant content on your blog, search engine bots will dominate your blog as relevant to your industry, following the principle of “freshness”.

In addition, quality content also helps you to capture the attention of your target audience and gain their trust. This will make them more likely to return to your site in search of valuable and relevant content.

As a result, SEO is an effective way to increase audience engagement and customer loyalty.

Users who access your website through search engines are searching for terms related to your brand, products, or services. Therefore, these users are more likely to become customers.

Because of this, SEO often offers a better return on investment than traditional advertising methods, such as radio ads, TV spots, etc.

Also, unlike PPC campaigns, SEO does not require you to pay search engines for a better position in the SERPs. Thus, organic traffic coming to your domain from search engines is “essentially free”.

The most advantageous thing about it is the difficulty for your competitors to overtake you in rankings, as long as you know how to maintain your position in the search engines.

It is clear that SEO is a very cost-effective way to achieve a top position on the first page of Google. However, it is important to understand that it is an ongoing process and that it takes time to achieve noticeable results.

Now let’s take a look at some strategies that will allow you to rank high in the search engines.

Check your indexed pages

Indexing is the process used by Google to identify new web pages and store them in different databases (known as indexes). It is vitally important that you check the indexing of your website and see what Google shows in its results.

Therefore, the first step is to check if your website has been indexed by Google. Otherwise, it will never be shown in any SERP for any search.

The easiest way to do this is to enter the following search query in Google: site: In this other post, you have a good list of Google footprints and their uses in SEO.

If the query returns a list of your website’s URLs, it indicates that your site has been indexed by Google. This means that if your domain has meaningful, quality content, then Google may include it in relevant search queries.

However, don’t worry if your web content is not yet in Google’s indexes. You can submit it with the Google Search Console tool. Google usually takes “nothing and less” to visit your website and index all pages.

Focus your strategy on the right keywords

The next step is to identify the keywords you intend to rank for. Keywords are terms and phrases that your target audience is likely to search for.

Your entire SEO strategy will depend on the relevance of the keywords to your brand and your products or services.

Identify your keywords

SEMrush or Ahrefs are great tools to find the most popular keywords in your industry. You can also use Google’s keyword planner to get suitable keyword suggestions or even Google Suggest.

To find the right keywords, it is important to have a clear understanding and understanding of your target audience, their needs and preferences, as well as how they think, act and buy.

It is also a good idea to take a look at the type of keywords your competitors are using in their strategy. Likely, these keywords are also relevant to your products or services.

Identify your main competitors and enter their website URLs into a keyword research tool. Another option is to carry out an in-depth analysis of your competitors; what keywords they use, how they structure their web architecture, the links they use, etc.

When searching for the right keywords, you don’t need to limit yourself to keyword research tools. You can also visit discussion forums such as Quora and Reddit and enter search queries related to your business or industry.

Then drill down into the most popular topics to understand what kind of information your target audience is looking for.

It is also recommended to consider voice search queries. These tend to be longer terms and more conversational in nature. They also include localized or “near me” search queries.

With more than 33 million devices with virtual assistants in circulation, this is one aspect you should not ignore.

Analyse the SERPs for your keywords

Keyword research is not just about using a tool or a forum to identify the most suitable keywords. You need to choose the really worthwhile ones. In other words, you need to analyze and validate your keywords. Then decide whether or not you want to “rank” for them.

An easy way to do this is to install the Moz toolbar (MozBar) in your browser. Choose any of the relevant keywords in your industry, and run a Google search.

Once you have done this step, check the metrics in terms of domain authority (DA) as well as the number of links in the first search results with the Moz toolbar.

If you find that most websites have a DA or DR greater than 30, it means that the keyword could have fairly high competition.

Targeting a non-competitive keyword makes it relatively easier to get a higher position in the SERPs and perhaps rank your website on the first page of Google.

You should also be aware that, if your website is new, it can be extremely difficult to beat a website with very high authority. I would recommend that you avoid using keywords with a lot of competition and focus on long-tail keywords.

However, you can use them for PPC campaigns.

Develop a good content marketing strategy

The quality of the content on your site has a big impact on your search engine rankings.

Therefore, publishing quality content should be one of your top priorities. At the same time, you should make sure that your content meets the need and the search intent.

Once you have identified your target keywords, it is time to create and publish valuable content focusing on those queries. Keyword-rich content (without keyword stuffing) is often perceived by search engines as more relevant and meaningful.

Therefore, you should use these keywords in your content in a natural way.

It is worth noting that over-optimizing your content with keywords can do you more harm than good. There was a time when SEO copywriters and webmasters got away with such “Black Hat” practices. However, the introduction of the Google Panda update put this practice behind them.

The aim of the introduction of Google Panda in the algorithm was to reward quality sites and penalize those with low quality or thin content.

Therefore, making use of these “Black Hat” techniques such as content scraping, duplication, etc. means putting your domain at risk. It increases your chances of being penalized and even banned from Google search results.

The blog is your ally

A good option is to create a FAQ page or a blog that answers the most frequently asked questions that your target audience may have.

It is crucial to have a deep understanding of the problems and concerns of your potential customers. To do so, publishing relevant and valuable content that addresses these concerns can help them in their buying decision.

In addition to enriching your content with keywords, you should also make sure it is well structured. Use interesting headlines (H1) and subheadings (H2, H3…) to keep your audience’s attention.

This will help improve your site’s dwell time and bounce rate which, in turn, has a positive impact on search engine rankings.

It is also a good idea to update existing content to avoid it becoming “stale”. A good strategy would be to publish evergreen content regularly to ensure that your content remains relevant over time.

Build a good link profile

One of the most (if not the most) important factors influencing a website’s search engine ranking is the strength of its inbound link profile, also known as backlinks.

When a good number of websites with authority and relevance in your industry link to your website, it acts as a mark of quality in the eyes of Google. Search engines perceive this as a good sign and possibly reward you with a higher ranking.

According to Google’s guidelines, the key is to publish content of such high quality that it is completely “natural” to get other relevant websites to link to you. This, in the vast majority of cases, is a utopia.

Therefore, my most sincere and absolute recommendation is that you adopt a “proactive” attitude towards getting backlinks. In other words, you have to force links to your website.

Strategies such as guest posting can also help you get free, high-authority backlinks. Another easier option, as long as your budget allows, is to buy links on platforms such as Publisuites, PrensaSEO, Unancor, or Prensalink.

Don’t neglect “social signals”

A strong social media presence may not have a direct impact on your search engine rankings, or yes, in my opinion, they help quite a lot.

However, this should not stop you from sharing your content on different social media platforms. If your content provides value and is liked by your audience, they will share it even more.

In addition to giving your content more visibility, this will help you gain links from websites that talk about your brand, product, or service. If your content goes viral, it will have a positive impact on your inbound link profile. This, in turn, will bring you closer to the top position on the first page of Google.

You can also collaborate with influencers in your industry to promote your content. Because of their massive reach, influencers can exponentially increase your visibility and audience. They can also help you create engaging, user-centric content.

Focus on a good user experience (UX)

Publishing quality content won’t do you much good if your website takes too long to load or is difficult to navigate. Search engines like Google want to provide the best search experience for their users. Therefore, in addition to quality content, they also prefer well-designed websites.

Your goal should be to develop a user-friendly site that loads considerably faster on different devices. Your users should have no problem navigating from one web page to another. This ensures that users spend more time on your domain, thus improving your bounce rate and dwell time.

In addition, you should also make sure that it is responsive, i.e. that it looks good on all devices. To do this, you can use Google’s “Mobile-Friendly Test” tool to find out how your website behaves on mobile devices.

The tool also suggests changes that can be made to your site to make it more mobile-friendly.

Finally, you should make sure that your site has a fluid architecture.

Local SEO, Google My Business

It is essential to create a Google My Business page for your brand with accurate information, such as an address, contact number, etc.

Be sure to provide a detailed business description that incorporates the keywords chosen in your strategy. Choose relevant categories to describe your business.

This is especially useful when you want to optimize your website for voice search queries, such as “near me” queries. It is also useful if your business is listed on Google Maps.

In addition, you should also list or create “citations” for your business in different directories such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, Foursquare, and others. This will improve the inbound link profile of your website. Consequently, you will ensure that search engines perceive your website as a reliable source of information.

Keep up to date with Google’s algorithm changes

Did you know that Google changes its search algorithm 500-600 times a year?

While major algorithm updates are announced publicly, minor changes may go unnoticed.

However, even these small changes can affect your website’s search engine ranking and cause it to disappear from the first page of Google.

Therefore, it is crucial to keep up to date with all the latest developments in SEO. Therefore, it is advisable to constantly modify your SEO strategy to adapt to changes in Google’s search algorithm.

Keep up to date with Google’s algorithm changes

Achieving a high position on the first page of Google is not enough. The real challenge is to maintain your position on the first page of Google once you have achieved it. Therefore, it does not hurt to carry out regular audits of both the Onpage and Offpage to make sure that your search engine ranking does not drop.

Make sure you don’t make mistakes such as duplicate content or thin content. Make use of short and simple URLs, and make sure they convey what the content is about. Also, check the metadata and descriptions (don’t leave them empty) of the different URLs to make sure they contain the relevant keywords.

Finally, monitor your domain’s inbound link profile to identify any toxic backlinks. You can use Google’s Disavow links tool to get rid of these toxic backlinks.

Semrush has a brilliant function within its tool to analyze your domain’s link profile and detect toxic links.

Conclusion

Ranking a website on the first page of Google is the dream of every webmaster or website owner. A high search engine ranking increases organic traffic to the domain, which increases brand awareness and credibility.

However, securing a position on the first page of Google is no easy task. It requires you to develop a solid SEO strategy that starts with proper keyword research, which is then translated into web architecture.

In addition, quality content must be at the heart of this strategy. You should start by having a deep knowledge of your potential customers to create relevant content for them.

Do you have any other tips for ranking a website on the first page of Google? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

See you soon!