Want to make your website appear first in Google search? It's not as difficult as you may think. In this guide, we'll share 11 fast & easy ways to get your website on Page 1 of Google.
According to one study, over 90% of total website traffic comes from search engines.
And– 90% of those users do not even bother browsing the second page of the search results.
This means that if you want to get any substantial volume of traffic to your website, you need to be on the first page of Google.
Internet Live Stat shows that there are currently over 1.95 billion websites on the internet. So you may be wondering, how on earth can you outrank so many websites in the Google search results?
Well, despite the high competition nowadays, we are here to tell you that it is not impossible to rank on Page 1. Thankfully, there are some fast and easy ways to significantly improve your rankings on Google and other popular search engines.
The collection of these tactics and strategies that can help web pages rank better in search engines is known as search engine optimization (SEO). In just a moment, we'll share 11 quick ways to get on Page 1.
But first, here are some key terminologies that you should know before moving ahead...
SEO Terminology You Should Know
- Keywords: When search engine marketers say "keywords", they are talking about the specific words that a user types into the search box.
- Search volume: This refers to how many people are searching for any given keyword. For instance, “marketing” is a broad keyword with a huge search volume, whereas “how to allocate a marketing budget for an event?” is a very specific keyword with low search volume.
- Longtail keywords: This is the term we use to describe very specific, low volume keywords. Although they are low volume, do not underestimate the power of longtail keywords! (We'll share more about that later.)
- Keyword research: When we do keyword research, we are using tools available online to find out what keywords real people are typing into search engines and their search volume. This is a critical activity that any business needs to do on a regular basis in order to rank on Page 1.
- Backlinks: Any hyperlink coming from one web page to another is called a backlink. These are important because more backlinks can indicate to search engines that your website is a high-quality, authoritative source of content.
- Internal links: Links pointing from one webpage to another on the same website are known as internal links. Internal links are also important because they help search engines to index your site.
A Quick Warning:
OK, now that you know some key terms, I would like to give you a warning. You are likely to see many "blackhat" SEO guides on the internet which will promise you quick results.
This is NOT going to be one of those guides.
Blackhat techniques are ways that people can cheat the system to rank on Page 1 of Google faster. And while there is a good chance that you may rank for some keywords, Google and other search engines will penalize you. They have advanced systems that help them track down blackhat SEO offenders, so it is not worth the risk.
If you really want to go the extra mile and do SEO the right way, I recommend that you to take an online marketing course like Persuasion Nation's blogging course. Taking a good course will teach you how to get started with marketing and increase your revenue, even if you are a complete beginner. Or, you can start your journey with articles like this one!
So, are you ready to get started?
Great! Here are 11 fast and easy ways to get your website on Page 1 of Google...
1. Add Keywords to Your Optin Landing Pages
An opt-in landing page is a specific page that marketers use for capturing leads by giving away a valuable resource for free, such as a free ebook, free report, free audit, and so on. These free resources are also known as "lead magnets".
According to recent statistics, companies like Nuffield Health have been able to generate 60% more revenue by optimizing their optin landing pages for SEO. They do this by including keywords that their target audience uses on the optin landing page.
2. Perform a Quick Content Audit
Google and other popular search engines expect webmasters to offer value to their users. They do not want you to publish articles that provide useless information. If your site has many low-quality blog posts, Google will see your site as a less authoritative site, resulting in a decline in traffic.
Content auditing is the process of going through your site’s content and removing "toxic" (low quality) articles from your site. Does this really help? Yes it does!
Ahrefs once removed nearly 31% of their overall content and saw a hike of traffic by 7%. Siege Media managed to see a whopping 50% spike on their visits with a content audit.
The above flowchart shows clear instructions on how to perform a content audit. First, you check to see if your published web page has surpassed six months or not. If no, you can check if there are any issues with backlinks or not, and then correct it. In case the web page has surpassed six months, check if it has a good volume of visitors or not. If not, review the web page and see whether the content can be improved.
3. Let Your Target Audience Dictate Your Content
Not every person on the internet is your target audience (the people who are potentially interested in your business and offer). To get quality traffic, you must know your audience.
You can research your audience quickly and simply using tools like Google Keyword Planner or UberSuggest.
To understand the current demand for certain topics, you can also check out trends by using Google Trends.
After researching your audience, you should produce specific content that they want. For instance, the keyword, “Top 10 Smartphones Under $300” may serve you better than, “Top 10 Smartphones in the World”. That's because the first keyword is more specific to what the target audience wants. In this case, you are targeting people who want a budget smartphone, not just any smartphone.
Make a list of specific keywords for your audience and start producing pieces of content for them.
4. Stop Competing With Yourself
When two or more blog posts on your website compete for the same set of keywords, it can confuse Google, leading to a decline in authority and traffic.
To stay away from "keyword cannibalization", you should avoid using the same main keyword in multiple posts. Make sure you use a unique term every single time you publish a piece of content.
Of course, it's fine to create content around topics that are related to one another, or pieces of content that go more in depth on certain side-topics. All of these side-topic articles can then link to the pillar article on your main topic, so that Google understands which content to display in the search results for specific queries.
5. Add Secondary Keywords
You will see a massive rise in your search traffic with this hack. It is a simple yet powerful tactic to increase your traffic!
All you have to do is insert secondary keywords to your top-performing blog posts. This will make your article rank for more keywords.
For instance, if your blog is performing well for the keyword "affiliate marketing," you can insert other related keywords into that same blog post, like “affiliate marketing for beginners”, "how to start affiliate marketing", and so on.
There is a free tool that you can use to find out the best performing web pages in your site. It is called Google Search Console.
You can simply click on Search Analytics to see the keywords that are bringing the most traffic to your site. Your job is to edit the web page in which you are getting that traffic and insert secondary keywords to the main article.
Does it actually work? Absolutely– Neil Patel has managed to get tons of traffic with this hack!
6. Add Links to Fresh Posts
Internal links are crucial when it comes to ranking your blogs for specific keywords. Do not ignore them.
In this tactic, you should add links to your authoritative blog posts pointing to your newest blog posts. This will increase traffic offer more "link juice" to your newly published articles.
For instance, if your site has a popular blog post about vegetable gardening, you can add a link to your newest blog post about the different types of gardening.
7. Discover Untapped Keywords
Here is one interesting fact. Almost 15% of annual searches on Google are entirely new to Google.
Google processes trillions of searches. Just imagine the volume of unique search terms on Google... Even the best keyword tools on the market may not provide accurate information to you in the case of never-before-searched keywords. These are untapped keywords that will be much easier to rank for!
How do you find them? Just go to Reddit and Quora to see what people want to know. In the screenshot below, you can see a lot of queries from many different people. List them down.
After that, write a fresh blog post to answer those questions.
8. Optimize Your SEO Title and Meta Description
Creating useful content is not enough to get substantial traffic. You should also focus on the click-through rate of your blog posts.
Your click-through rate is the percentage of people who click on your blog post title in the search results. This rate is dependent on how good your title and meta description is, because that is the title and description that someone sees when your blog post appears in the search results.
A higher click-through rate will eventually result in a higher ranking in the search results!
Here are some best practices for optimizing your title and meta description (and increase your click-through rate):
- People are more likely to click emotional headlines. (Here are some tools to help you create a persuasive headline.)
- Your URL should contain your target keywords
- The meta description should be appealing enough to entice users to click the link. Briefly outline the benefits of reading your article in the meta description.
9. Outdo the Competition
Whenever you come across many poorly-written blog posts in the top of the search results, you have a huge opportunity to outdo those articles and out-rank them. It will not be that difficult to exceed sites that offer little value.
To apply this tactic, you need to make the list of long tail keywords and start searching on Google. Go through the sites that are ranked on Page 1.
After that, you should check out whether the articles have outdated, short, uninformative, or confusing content. If you find it on the first page of the search results, that means you can simply create a better article than the others and you should be able to easily rank for that specific keyword.
10. Imitate Your Competitors
Keep an eye on the recent blog posts of your competitors on a regular basis and monitor their backlinks. Anything topics that they are ranking for is something that you should strive to rank for as well. You can even get backlinks from the same websites!
Here is the list of SEO tools that will help you analyze your competitor's backlinks for this purpose.
After using SEO tools to analyze your competitors backlink profile, you can identify and replicate their backlinks. In the above image, we have identified the websites that have linked back to mangools.com. Make a list of websites that have linked back. There is a great chance of getting a backlink if you reach out to people who are linking out to your competitors site, because you are in the same niche.
Do backlinks really increase your Google rankings? Absolutely– backlinks are a huge factor, and you must have them if you want to get your blog on Page 1.
11. Run a Mobile-Friendly Test
Google now uses the mobile-first index. This means that Google will first consider the users’ mobile experience before they decide how they will rank your website.
So whatever website design you use, it absolutely must be mobile friendly.
Thankfully, there is a free Google tool that can help you make your site mobile responsive. Simply run the test, and it will tell you exactly what problems need fixing and how to fix them so that your website will get a big "green light" from Google.
If you want to learn more, here is a detailed guide for further study.
Conclusion
Many website owners give up on SEO after they do not see quick results. Keep in mind that getting your site ranked on the first page of Google is a long-term game, and you should have the patience in the beginning. You'll need to put in some effort in order to build momentum... but once you have built up a reputation for being an authoritative site, it will be easier and easier to get your new blog posts on Page 1!
You must have noticed by now that I’ve not asked you to play with HTML and all in this article.
Why? As one study shows, 75% of SEO depends on off-page strategies. So there is no point in making things overly complicated.
Implementing the strategies in this article will drastically increase your chances of getting organic traffic with minimal effort. Go ahead and pick one of these to try today!
If you have any more tips to share, let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear from you guys.
Danish Wadhwa is a doyen of governing the digital content to assemble good relationships for enterprises or individuals. He is specialized in digital marketing, cloud computing, web designing and offers other valuable IT services for organizations, eventually enhancing their shape by delivering stupendous solutions to their business problems.