What is the best way to improve search engine ranking? Search engines rank websites according to a number of factors. So the best way is to learn what these factors are and apply that knowledge to your website in multiple ways. Search engines rank websites according to a number of criteria. Google uses hundreds of ranking criteria to determine where to rank your site. Some of the best known factors are:
- Domain authority – how Google sees your website compared to others in your industry/niche
- Back links – your back link profile shows search engines who has linked to your site, when they linked and the link profile over time.
- Content – your content is used to determine the value of your site; how much, the quality of it and how well optimised it is for SEO – search engine optimisation
- Viewer actions – how someone reacts to your content is a big signal to Google as to how to rate your website – do they click away immediately, share content or link out to you, for example.
- Social media presence – is your content shared regularly on social media? do you have a large social media presence linked to your site?
- Domain age – older domains are generally more well thought of by Google than brand new ones; particularly if they have built up more back links and quality content over time.
- Outgoing links – the sites you link out to tell something about your site. If you link to high authority sites, you’re more likely to be more credible, for example than if you linked out to spammy sites which offer no value.
Best Way To Improve Search Engine Ranking – SEO Plugin
One of the best ways you can improve search engine ranking on your website is to use an SEO plugin to optimise your website for its keywords. Yoast SEO is a popular and free plugin which helps you write search engine friendly content on your site; or improve existing content.
So if you don’t have this plugin or something similar, you can do a very thorough examination of your content with the plugin. It helps you target specific keywords in your content; letting you know where to place keywords. Keywords should be placed in headers, image alt tags, and through your copy. It basically offers suggestions which will help with your SEO – search engine optimisation.
Best Way To Improve Search Engine Ranking – A Site Audit
You can do a site audit too, which will show you how your site is performing in the search engine rankings and offer suggestions for “easy wins”. If one of your pages is ranking on page 2 on Google, for example, you can then improve your content and optimise that particular page. As you do so, your page should move up the rankings on to page 1, depending on your competition. The same can be done for content you have which ranks at the bottom of page one of the search results.
Once you know which pages are almost ranking near the top of page 1 on Google, you can focus your efforts there for more traffic. Here’s a company which will help you with this. Or you can purchase access to software which will help you do this. SEM Rush is one such software which can help you with this. It will also show you errors on your site to be fixed and a number of other things which can help you rank better.
Best Way To Improve Search Engine Ranking – Social Media
Social media signals are another way you can increase your visibility on the whole; while also signalling your online presence and growth to Google, and other search engines.
You can increase your social media presence in a few different ways:
- Social media share buttons on your site – to make it easier for visitors to share your content – see also best free blog plugins for WordPress
- Automated syndication software which places your fresh (and older) content automatically throughout your social media presence – see autopost to social media from WordPress
- Use a social media feed on your site to show current social activity to your visitors
Best Way To Improve Search Engine Ranking – More People
Once you have social share software on your site, more traffic will naturally lead to more shares, assuming your content is good! It should also, over time, lead to a natural back linking profile which comes from people who appreciate your content and link out to it.
Your search engine rankings can therefore also be improved simply by increasing your traffic. This can be done in many ways including paid advertising, but here’s a couple of cheaper methods. (See also how to boost traffic to your website.)
Push notifications allow you to have your visitors opt in to pop ups which will appear on their browser when you publish new content. Push engage is a simple and free plugin which does this for you.
You can also accomplish this with an email marketing software which collects emails from your website and automatically sends out email notifications which can lead subscribers back to your content. See the power of email marketing.
Content Is King
If you content is good, Google will know. They see how people will respond to your content. If they click away immediately, it’s a signal that your content isn’t what someone is looking for, or that it’s bad! So Google will down rank your content accordingly when they see this.
So as much as SEO is an important part of ranking your site better, you also need to create content which is good. If it’s good a number of things will happen:
- More people will stick around on your site
- Google will see this and add it to their ranking factors for your site
- People will be more likely to like and share you content
- More people will build backlinks to your content – helping your rankings further still.
- People are more likely to sign up to your push notifications and/or email list
So make your content as good as you possibly can. If it’s good, older content will stand the test of time too, which will further compound your results over time.
Backlinks
Of course backlinks are going to help you rank your site better than other sites with fewer (or lower authority) links. Ideally you would get backlinks from authority sites within your niche. This can be a challenge though because high domain authority sites got that way because they don’t link out to just anyone! There’s a few ways you can build backlinks to your site:
- Do guest posting – ask to write content on other websites within your niche
- Blog/forum commenting – comment on high quality sites within your niche
- Directories – allow you to place links on them for free or for a small fee
- Outsource back linking using a company which offers SEO services
Having great content on your site is a must for a natural link profile which should happen over time if you do a good job of it!
Blogging – Yes Create More Content
Having a lot of content on your site is a big signal to Google (and others) that you’re an expert in your particular field. It also is a useful way to build your authority and generate traffic at the same time.
Use an SEO plugin and write the best quality content you can. Blogging takes time and is a lot of effort, particularly in the early days. A lot of work doesn’t seem to achieve very much.
But over time your older content will start ranking and bring you new visitors, who of course can share, like and subscribe. When this happens in a large enough numbers you site should start taking off. This can take months or years depending on your topic, and how much effort you can put in.
Target Long Tail Keywords
Writing content won’t necessarily get you ranking on Google. If you’re in a competitive field and you write for the short tail keywords, you’re up against a lot of competition. One way around this is to write content and target long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty.
There’s many benefits of long tail keywords but the main one is that you can more easily rank your content for them in the SERPS – search engine results pages. Whereas with shorter phrases, although there’s more traffic for them, there’s also a lot more competition in the search results.
Finding those untapped keywords which offer far fewer competing pages on Google gives you much more chance of a top ranking on the first page!
Paid Marketing
If you’ve done all of the above, and your visitors are sharing your content as they visit your website, a little paid marketing can go a long way. It won’t immediately increase your ranking of course, but if your visitors are sharing and linking to you, it can speed up the process of your SEO.
There’s many paid marketing platforms such as Google Ads, Bing (Microsoft), Facebook, YouTube, etc. Adwords (Google) is a good place to start and they even do a dynamic advert which can crawl your site and place an appropriate ad according to your content. This is a great way to get more eyes on your blog posts very quickly, which of course can lead to more shares, likes and links too, if you’ve done a good job of your content!