“I’d rather we didn’t rank higher on Google .”

… no one ever said.

Who doesn’t want to be number one on the most popular search engine in the world? A higher ranking on Google not only brings more traffic to your site, increases your online presence, and builds credibility for your business; it’s also just nice.

The fact is that “ranking higher” is a relative concept. You can be a new site or a beginner SEO looking to rank above page six for your blog post, or you can aim to move from sixth on page one to first. Therefore, in this article, I will talk about 15 ways to improve your Google rankings, broken down into three levels, from the easiest to the most advanced.

How to rank high on Google

This section introduces the basics of SEO for those who are not very familiar with the world of SEO. Be sure to check these boxes if you want to rank high.

Choose smart keywords

First of all, you need to know what you want to get in the ranking. And, of course, you want to rank for the terms your ideal clients search for. These are keywords, and you’ll need keyword research tools to determine which ones you should rank for.

Here are the factors involved in determining the best keywords to rank on Google:

• Volume: How many times a month searches are performed for this term?
• Competition: How difficult is this keyword to rank for?
• Your Domain Authority: Domain authority affects how easy it is for you to rank for keywords. If your site has been around for a long time and you’ve been posting quality content during that time, you’ll have an easier time.
• Relevance: It makes no sense to rank for a keyword that won’t bring qualified traffic to your site.

Check Keyword Intent

In general, there are four main types of keywords: informational, commercial, transactional, and navigational. For SEO, informational keywords are the most important. But even within informational keywords, you need to figure out exactly what information people are looking for when they search for that keyword.

Write long content about it

The Key to High Google Rankings? Deep and detailed content for the keyword you are targeting. This is most obvious for blog posts, but you can do it for landing pages as well

Perform SEO on the page

This is the bread and butter of ranking high on Google.

Here is your short checklist:

• Keyword Placement: Make sure your keyword is present in the meta title, meta description, at least two H2s, image filenames, image alt text, URL, and of course the body of the page.
• Internal linking: Add links to the page from at least three other pages on your site.
• External linking: Add links to relevant, trustworthy pages on pages 1-3.
• Optimize your meta description: Keep 155-165 characters and tell the reader about the value they will get by clicking on your page.

How to rank high on Google

So, here’s how to rank high on Google. But you may have already done all of this. Maybe you already rank pretty high and want to rank higher. If this is you, keep reading.

Target long-tail, interrogative keywords

For the most part, keywords that hit the spot in terms of volume and competition will be long tail keywords, but long tail question keywords are an added bonus because they provide an opportunity to appear higher than the top results for broader, ultra-high volume keywords. – through the “People Ask Too” section.

Make information viewable

More and more, Google is focusing on providing answers and not just a list of pages. Hence the term “zero-click search”, where the user can get the information they need right on the results page without clicking on any of the results. It’s not great for those of us who want to drive traffic to a site, but if you can’t beat them (Google is like Goliath on roids), join them and be the source Google builds the answer from is the best way to rank higher.

The best way to optimize for this is to make your content viewable. In this way, Google will be able to extract snippets of your content to create response results, such as Featured Snippet, Passage Ranking, and even meta descriptions. Here’s how to do it:

• Use heading tags. Every website builder/CMS allows you to do this. Don’t just create headings by increasing the size and weight of the text; make sure they are wrapped in H2 and H3 tags. For example, the blog article How to Brand Your Business has a clear H2 heading that says How to Brand Your Business, and then each of the steps is an H3.
• Use specific headings. Unfortunately, SEO can sometimes limit your creativity. A person should be able to view only the titles of your article in order to get immediate responses. Below you can see that Google has bypassed the meta description we provided for the above article and created it based on the H3 headings:

Make candid statements

No, not in the sense of obscene language. What I mean is that when you target keywords with a question, even if the answer is in multiple parts, make sure there is an explicit statement somewhere in the post that gives a clear answer and reframes the question at the same time.

Include Meaningful Visuals

Including images on your page can help it rank higher in several ways. First, it makes the content more engaging, which allows people to stay on the page longer; secondly, the results of a conventional search are becoming more and more visual; third, it gives your images a chance to rank higher in search results.

But for those blog posts that you want to rank higher, stock images and blank graphics won’t work. You want images that illustrate concepts, add value, and match the meaning of the keyword.

Have a table of contents

This is an easy element to add to your blog posts that Google seems to like a lot. You can often see Google adding these links right into the post meta description.

Improve your meta titles

Yes, you got it right. Your SEO Title, or Meta Title, is the title that appears in the actual SERP. As with headlines, Google doesn’t give you much room for creativity. Most often, a heading similar to the one already on the first page is selected.

So while you can choose something more colorful in the H1 title (the title that appears on the page itself), stick to 60 characters or less for the SEO title, add a keyword, and pay attention to modifiers that seem popular, like year. in the title.

How to Rank Highest on Google

To rank even higher or to improve rankings for really difficult keywords.

Get backlinks

A backlink is a link to your page from another site, which is a significant ranking factor.

If you create quality content and promote it on social media, you may already be getting backlinks. But you can also be proactive in getting backlinks to specific pages. You can find out how to get backlinks here.

Study your search terms

Search Console will show you which queries people see your page in search results for and which ones lead them to click. This can help you find additional titles to add to the page, as well as additional keywords for your landing pages. If you’re already randomly ranking for it, then you’re bound to rank when you intentionally target that keyword.

Target how-to and tutorial keywords with videos

Video content is increasingly appearing in SERPs, and in some cases, this is the only opportunity to rank higher for a topic. For example, look at SERPs for “how to advertise on Facebook”. Between Ads, People Also Ask, Facebook Organic Results, and Video, the “top” true organic page result is literally the last result on the page.

But if you create video content around the topic, you can rank highest in organic results (because you’re not going to outrank Facebook).

Landing pages that are already ranking

Sometimes it’s easier to move a post from position nine to four than, say, from page nine to four. Moreover, in the first case, traffic will increase much more than in the second. If you have a large site, use an SEO tool like Ahrefs or Semrush to filter organic keywords by position and see if you have pages that match those requirements, then see if they can be re-optimized.

Do a SERP Analysis

This is another strategy where you will need an SEO tool. If you really, really want to rank number one for a particular keyword, you need to do SERP analysis to understand exactly what it will take – and if it’s realistic. For example, if I want to rank the highest in the whole world for “small business ideas,” I see myself competing with HubSpot—namely, a page that has 4,589 backlinks from 1,100 different domains on a site with a domain ranking of 93 .

Landing pages that are already ranking

Sometimes it’s easier to move a post from position nine to four than, say, from page nine to four. Moreover, in the first case, traffic will increase much more than in the second. If you have a large site, use an SEO tool like Ahrefs or Semrush to filter organic keywords by position and see if you have pages that match those requirements, then see if they can be re-optimized.

Do a SERP Analysis

This is another strategy where you will need an SEO tool. If you really, really want to rank number one for a particular keyword, you need to do SERP analysis to understand exactly what it will take – and if it’s realistic. For example, if I want to rank the highest in the whole world for “small business ideas,” I see myself competing with HubSpot—namely, a page that has 4,589 backlinks from 1,100 different domains on a site with a domain ranking of 93.

Add Schema Markup

Schema.org markup is not a ranking factor, but it can help improve your visibility in search results and make your results more clickable. Schema markup is a way for Google to be more specific about the types of content on your page, which can help it show up in rich results. There are many different types of rich results – articles, breadcrumbs, events, FAQs, how-tos, job postings, FAQs, and more.

You can use the Google Rich Result tester tool to find out what content on your page can be used for Schema markup.

Check Technical SEO

Most technical SEO is done at the site level, but there are plenty of page-level optimizations you can do to improve rankings, such as making sure your images are compressed and the right size and that there are no indexing issues. You can check key page metrics, mobile usability, and more right from Search Console.

Also, be sure to do a manual mobile usability test —not just use Google’s Mobile Usability Test, but visit the page on a mobile device to make sure the elements display correctly. There are things that the code crawler simply won’t notice.

How to Rank Higher on Google: Summing Up

That’s all. SERP has come a long way from a list of 10 blue links. Google prioritizes visual, pull-out, fresh content to create rich SERPS that provide immediate responses. Use these tips to rank high, high, and high to build authority in your niche and reach your website traffic and conversion goals.

In the name of explicit claims here’s how to rank higher on Google in 2023:

• Target smart keywords
• Check Intent
• Write long content about it
• Do SEO on the page
• Target long-tail, interrogative keywords
• Make information viewable
• Make explicit assertions
• Include Meaningful Visuals
• Have a table of contents
• Borify meta titles
• Get backlinks
• Focus on search terms
• Create video content
• Target pages that are already ranking
• Do a SERP Analysis
• Schema markup
• Technical SEO