The step-by-step information on the way to enhance Google rankings with out punishment

Top Google rankings are a pinnacle of online business success.

According to Backlinko, the first result on Google receives 31.7 percent of all clicks – while the results on the second page only receive 0.78 percent of all clicks.

I have spoken to many business owners and managers – newbies and veterans – who have gone crazy trying to unlock the secrets of improving Google rankings without facing any punishment.

I wish I could tell you that there is a magic button that will put your website at number 1.

The truth is it takes ingenuity, dedication, perseverance and creativity. This is especially true due to the ever-changing nature of the Google algorithm.

While there is no magic, there are steps you can take to get to the top of a search engine results page (SERP).

I learned this the hard way. Fortunately, you don't have to.

I'm going back to the basics of on-page SEO to help you understand the new SEO rules, learn how to optimize for both humans and crawlers by search algorithms, and on-page and off-page – Mastering SEO.

Here are the steps that I'll cover in this guide:

Step 1: get to know the Google algorithm

I could jump right into some actionable SEO strategies to use on your website right now.

However, I want to set you up for long-term success so you don't get punished every time a new update is released.

Google executives like Gary Illyes and John Mueller acknowledge that Google is constantly changing its algorithm, although most of those changes are not publicly announced.

Moz estimates that there are 500 to 600 changes to the Google algorithm every year!

While Google previously published important update announcements, the exact inner workings of the algorithm are not yet known. Most of the information is just speculation by industry professionals.

After all, if everyone knew exactly how to rank first without penalties for linking or black hat SEO strategies, Google wouldn't be able to rank only the best results. Anyone could hack their way up without getting the job done.

This would not only make it more difficult for honest people like you and me to succeed, it would also seriously jeopardize Google's corporate philosophy:

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

The best knowledge we have about the Google algorithm is important algorithm updates like:

• Mobile-First-Update (July 2019): Googlebot now considers all websites as smartphones and prioritizes websites that work well on mobile devices.
• Mobile-friendly update (April 2015): Preferring websites with mobile-friendly versions and preparing the requirements for future penalties if websites do not meet the requirements.
• Pigeon (July 2014): Worked on integrating local search results like Google Maps.
• Kolibri (August 2013): The aim is to understand the context and intent behind a user's search, rather than just looking at the literal words they typed.
• Penguin (April 2012): Targeted spammers and websites that buy unnatural links to improve their rankings.

Not to mention Panda, Google EMDs (exactly matching domain names) and the Private Blog Network (PBN) deindexing updates. Then there's Phantom, which first appeared in May 2013 and has probably been updated four times – but has never been confirmed by Google.

How are you supposed to keep track of all these google updates?

There are some great resources out there to help. Moz's Google Algorithm Change History is a great database that organizes updates in chronological order. Also check out Google Webmaster Central.

Check out the video below to learn more about my link building, on-page SEO, and user metrics strategies when trying to rank on Google.

Now that we've covered the basics of the algorithm, let's turn to the actionable strategies I mentioned earlier.

Step 2: Evaluate your current Google ranking

To improve your Google ranking, you need to know where you are. This also applies to new websites. Fortunately, there are several tools that can help.

Use Ubersuggest to check your website's keyword rank

Once you've selected certain keywords in the page content, use my Ubersuggest tool to rate your rank.

Log in and then use the "Traffic Summary" under the Competitor Report. Enter your domain and you'll see a list of the SEO keywords you ranked for, top pages, and an overview of your SEO keyword ranking.

Scroll down to see the SEO Keywords chart, which shows where you rank for top keywords.

Check the speed of your website

Next, it is important to check the website speed as it is still an important Google ranking factor.

If your website is slow, you have little chance of a high search position. This also affects your ability to convert and sell new customers.

Walmart saw a sharp drop in conversions as page load times went from one to four seconds.

In this case, it doesn't matter what your on-page SEO, meta description, or title tags are. The search algorithm will penalize you even if you are a giant like Walmart.

This is why it is important to do your own website speed test to find out how you can improve Google's ranking. There are dozen of tools that can help you with this. Some of my favorites are:

How to test the speed of your page content using Pingdom.

Go to tools.pingdom.com and enter your url. Select the location where you want to test and click "Start Test".

Quick Sprout registers a performance level of 81. As long as your site registers above 50, this is a good place to start.

When you reach a performance level of less than 50, your page content is very slow and you need to work on improving it.

Also check the page load time.

Quick Sprout runs pretty well at 1.89 seconds. Aim for less than 2 seconds for a really fast website and less than a second for mobile devices.

Keep in mind that loading times longer than a few seconds can cause you to lose a significant amount of site traffic.

Check the health of your website

After checking the keyword search engine rank and the speed of the website, assess the general health of your website before you start optimizing.

After months or years of persistence, have you seen a sudden drop in organic traffic?

Wondering if Google deindexed (or blocked) your website?

There are many great tools out there to put this puzzle together. Try the MxToolBox Domain Health Report tool to check for major problems in five different categories: general site problems, blacklist, mail server, web server, and DNS.

Just click the box for each category to view specific errors and warnings. From there you can work one by one to resolve them.

To see if you have been penalized by any of the major algorithm updates, check out FE International's Website Penalty Indicator tool.

You will see a graph showing your website traffic in relation to the introduction of important updates. With this comparison, you know one step closer to whether an update has directly affected your website.

To find a Google penalty, sign in to Google Search Console and look for the "Security and manual actions" report. Find out here if Google took manual action against your website.

Note that this report will only show if a human reviewer has determined that your website is violating Google's quality guidelines. You don't know if a Google algorithm update has penalized your website.

If you have a manual penalty, fix it (this guide on how to recover from a Google penalty may help), then submit a re-verification request to Google.

Step 3: Track and Measure the Right SEO Metrics

Next, you need to track some key metrics on your website to see what other factors need to be improved. Here are the key metrics to evaluate.

Organic traffic

Knowing how visitors find your website through Google is important. In the past, organic search drove most website visitors and destroyed non-organic channels like paid search and social media.

Today, social media, email, and paid ads are often leading the way in increasing organic traffic – but this can vary dramatically by industry.

To find out how many visitors are reaching your website, log into your Google Analytics account and read the acquisition channels report. This helpful Google Analytics guide will lead you.

Organic traffic conversions

In addition to analyzing search traffic, you should also consider the keywords that are generating traffic for your website. This is harder to see than it used to be, but it is still possible.

One way to find these is with a simple tool called SERP Scan. I used it to identify the keywords that are converting organically for my website.

SERP Scan shows you the keywords that have sent organic traffic to your website in the last 12 months. It includes an on-page SEO keyword performance table.

This tool is an easy way to get the data you need from Google Analytics and understand the big picture of the keywords on your website. But you still need more.

Keyword ranking for transactional keywords

The number one mistake with keyword research is that you are not focusing enough on transactional keywords.

This is because commercial keywords drive sales. In order to improve your search engine rankings and make money, you need to understand the difference between commercial and informational keywords in order to improve Google rankings.

If all of your keywords are informative, you are still generating organic traffic. However, it can be difficult to convert these visitors into buyers or people to share on social media.

The reason is that visitors are looking Informational keywords to like:

• How to Eliminate Acne Using Household Products
• How to install WordPress
• Make money online for free
• Free eBook download
• Top 10 Free Article Spinners

When they're not in the mood to buy, they want you to speak their language – free search engine language. Now these terms can drive traffic, and a solid sales funnel will convert some of these people – but not many.

In contrast, there are people who use it Transaction keywords show user intent like:

• Best acne products
• Top 10 web hosting providers
• Web designer in NY

These people are probably looking for a solution that they can buy.

Hopefully, if you're in the e-commerce industry, you already know that transactional keywords tend to convert well.

Keywords that have the following words as a prefix (before) or suffix (after) to the rest of the keyword phrase usually work well:

• to buy
• review
• purchase
• Discount
• coupon
• deal
• shipping
• assignment

Earlier, I was talking about the keywords that are sending you organic traffic. They should also be used in the meta description as well as in on-page SEO (more on that later).

Here is another example. Can you tell the difference between informational and transactional keywords?

Set up an SEO dashboard to keep track of these metrics

I recommend setting up an SEO dashboard so that you can keep track of all important metrics at all times.

How to Set Up One in Google Analytics Tools like SEMRush also make it easy to track SEO efforts with a built-in dashboard – but you have to pay for the tool to use it.

If you have the money to go without SEO tools, go for it. However, if you are on a budget, Google Analytics should serve you well.

In addition to setting up dashboards in Google Analytics, you can get even more extensive keyword data by connecting Google Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics. You can find full instructions on how to do this here.

Step 4: make sure your website is cellphone (and mobile-first google ready).

More than half of all website traffic comes from a mobile device. That said, if you want to rank well, your website needs to be performing well on mobile.

While some algorithm changes remain unclear, Google hasn't left anything to the imagination when it comes to mobile. On January 10, 2017, the Google Webmaster Blog said:

As of today, pages where content is not easily accessible to a user when transitioning from mobile search results may not rank as highly.

In 2020, Google switched to "mobile-first indexing," which means that Google regards websites as a mobile device. If your website is difficult to navigate, it will affect your ranking.

Thankfully, it's pretty easy to see where you are at. Google's mobile-friendly test is a quick way to determine if your website is mobile-friendly or on its way to Penaltyville.

Just enter your url and hit "RUN TEST".

The results will give you a clear yes or no answer, as well as a list of the problems you encountered while loading the page. This is a great way to troubleshoot and tweak to make sure your mobile website is running smoothly.

You can see page loading issues such as redirect errors and pages where robots.txt prevented Googlebot from crawling the page.

Google Search Console also has a mobile usability report that lists the issues with the mobile usability of your website.

Tips to make your website mobile-friendly

If your website isn't cell-friendly, add this to your to-do list above.

• You can get a quick fix through services like Mobify or Duda Mobile.
• If your website is based on a popular CMS platform like WordPress or Wix, most of the themes are cell phone-friendly. You may need to update your site to the latest version to take advantage of these features.
• Make sure CTAs and form fields use large, easy-to-type buttons.
• Don't use popups that can't be closed. Yes, popups improve conversions, but they can also be annoying to users.

For more SEO info, see Google's Tips for Improving Website Rankings on Mobile.

Mobile and Local SEO: An SEO Friendship

There is a strong link between mobile and local search. Google offers hyper-local search and connects consumers and brands as smoothly and quickly as possible.

For this reason, you should make sure that your Google My Business profile is up to date and complete.

These profiles can be a determining factor for someone searching in your area. Request your business listing and update it ASAP if you haven't. This also applies to other local listing sites like Yelp, Facebook, Better Business Bureau, and more.

For a complete overview, see HubSpot's list of local business listings and directories.

Step 5: Diagnose and Correct Your Current Google Penalties

Now that you've understood your search ranking and set up tracking for key metrics, it's time to take a deep dive into your website and correct current penalties.

This is fundamental – there is no point in promoting or building links to an unhealthy website. Before we get into that, I want to cover a few things that could get you a Google fine.

Link building has changed

Spam links used to be the holy grail of website traffic. This Moz case study shows how a site used garbage link schemes to create inbound links.

The worst part is that this used to work. But those days are long in the past.

Bad links harm your website. If you use them, expect a Google penalty sooner rather than later.

Because of this, it is important to consider how you will generate links to your website.

As Matt Cutts said, "Links shouldn't just look natural, they should be natural."

The feeling remains true to this day.

Here's how. Start by identifying and eliminating unhealthy links.

Analyze your links

First, analyze inbound links to your site. There are several link analysis tools you can use to do this:

Let me guide you through a link analysis with SEOprofiler.

Open a free account and go to Link Profiler → Backlinks. Let's use problogger.net:

The results show the most important elements to look for when analyzing your backlinks:

• Unique active backlinks: This shows the number of links that directly or indirectly affect your Google ranking. "Unique" means that the links come from different IP addresses. This is one way of identifying a natural connection. These links have been indexed by Google for the past 90 days.
• Nofollow links: Problogger has 10.2% nofollow links, which is 1,522 backlinks out of a total of 14,922. In 2005, Google introduced the rel = "nofollow" tag to prevent spam blog comments from artificially manipulating the ranking. After the Google Penguin update rolled out, it was important to diversify your link profile. And as Matt Cutts mentioned, you need a mix of dofollow links (links that pass ranking value to search engines) and nofollow links (links that don't pass ranking value).
• Industry: When reading Problogger's content, you may think that the industry is "blogging" or "internet marketing". If you look at this analysis, it turns out to be "media". Knowing your industry can help you identify relevant links that will improve your backlink profile in the search algorithm used by the search engine.
• Link Influence Score: This shows how links from the website affect the search engine ranking of linked pages. The higher the score, the better. As a very popular and influential website, Problogger scores a whopping 99%! Check out your own website and see what your score is.
• Anchor text: Click the link in the left menu to access data for anchor text (anchor text is the text that becomes your link and points to your page) pointing to your site. Google's Penguin Update was introduced to prevent website owners from manipulating search results with exact matching anchor text. If you want to stay under the search algorithm's punishment radar, diversify your anchor text.

It is also important to know which links are harmful to your website so that you can remove them. Some of the malicious links include:

• Coming from PR n / a or PR0 websites
• Are mostly sitewide links
• Are referring domain names with little traffic
• They come from websites with the same IP class address
• Coming from websites with a lot of external links

There are many free tools that you can use to identify unhealthy links. Two that I tried are Monitor backlinks and Linkquidator.

Moz has a detailed tutorial on what links can harm your site and what to do about them.

Remember to export the broken link list once you find it. That way you can refer to it later.

Clean up your link profile to avoid a Google penalty

This is the next step in cleaning up your link profile. There are two ways to do this.

1. Request manual link removal: Visit the website that the unhealthy / unnatural links came from and contact the website owner. Ask the website owner to either remove your link (the better option) or add a nofollow tag.

If you have outsourced link building in the past, you can also reach out to the person who placed the links for you and ask that person to have the links removed. Here is an excerpt from a post in Search Engine World to show how this works:

If this happens, don't ask the website owner to remove your links as they may assume you are a spammer and are ignoring you. Instead, follow this tutorial from the Search Engine Journal to learn the best way to contact webmasters about removing links.

2. Use Google's Disavow Links Tool: If you fail to get rid of unhealthy links, the only thing you can do is use Google's link disable tool.

While removing links manually is best, it is a good second choice.

The disavow tool is part of the Google Search Console. Once you open the search console, you'll see a list of all of your websites.

Go to the site that you want to disable links for. You will see:

If you are looking for unnatural links, you have the option of exporting the links found. When you've done this, upload the file and click Done.

Like you, Google can't remove the links as they don't have access to the referring websites.

However, this gives Google the right to stop passing on any link juice (value) from these links to your page content.

3. Diversify the anchor text distribution: Anchor text can play a key role in improving or completely destroying your search ranking. As mentioned earlier, if you want a natural link profile, you need to diversify the anchor text.

When distributing your anchor text, make sure to include the following types:

Let's say your content sells blue jeans. How do you distribute your anchor text if your domain name is bluedenimjeans.com?

If you want to link three times from a specific website, the ideal is to use this link profile:

• Anchor text 1: Bluedenimjeans.com Page – Landing Page: Homepage
• Anchor text 2: Jeans Reviews Online Landing Page: A page where you reviewed the item
• Anchor text 3: www.bluedenimjeans.com Reviews – Landing Page: Your Business

4. Avoid over-optimizing: If you overuse anchor texts, it can lead to over-optimization and punish you. Geoff Kenyon suggests the following percentage:

To avoid over-optimizing the anchor text, follow these two guidelines:

1. Avoid excessive keyword tich anchor text: If you want to link to a topic on your internal pages, e.g. For example, "link building strategies" do not use the same keyword phrase as your anchor text. Instead, use something like "Learn more about link building" or a combination of a generic and the exact keyword. Diversity is the key.
2. Avoid irrelevant links: What is the point of linking to the "best golf trainer" as an anchor on your dog training website? There is no point in improving Google ranking and you may actually get a Google penalty.

For a detailed guide to over-optimizing, see How to Avoid Over-optimizing Your Site.

Step 6: improve Google's ranking with keyword research

Once you've got rid of unnatural links, it's time to start improving on-page SEO the right way.

Keyword research is an essential element of an effective inbound marketing strategy. You won't get very far without understanding how it works.

Learn how your target audience is finding your website

To be effective, you need to identify the keywords that your target audience will use to find your website. This is how it works

Step 1: Visit Ubersuggest, enter your keyword and hit search.

Step 2: Click Keyword Ideas

Step 3: Review the keywords and search volume for the month

This is how it helps you.

Searching for keywords gives you firsthand information about your target audience, the information they want to know, and how they want it.

For example, if someone searches for "Beginners HTML5 Tutorials," you know the searcher is a newbie looking for solutions and content that will help on the subject.

This can lead you to write headings and content that rank well in Google search results.

Finding out your target audience's buyer personalities and customer lifecycle helps you understand what motivates them. Then provide relevant page content that can help you improve your Google ranking.

Alexa can help you figure out audience demographics, like the following example for Upworthy.

Do you remember when I mentioned transaction and information keywords?

Searching for keywords makes it easy to see if users are simply looking for information or ready to buy it.

This is known as user intent. This is how it looks for the keyword research example used earlier.

In this example, free web design is an example of an information keyword. Kostenlose Webdesign-Kurse sind ein Beispiel für ein Transaktionsschlüsselwort.

Sie benötigen sowohl Informations- als auch Transaktionsschlüsselwörter in Ihrem Seiteninhalt, um das Google-Ranking Ihrer Website zu verbessern.

Es ist Ihre Aufgabe, zu informieren, zu inspirieren, zu inspirieren und Interesse zu wecken, bevor Sie ein Produkt empfehlen.

Informationsschlüsselwörter können verwendet werden, um E-Mail-Listen zu erstellen und potenzielle Kunden zu fördern, bevor ein Produkt zum Verkauf angeboten wird.

Ignorieren Sie auch keine Long-Tail-Keywords und -Fragen.

Mit der zunehmenden Sprachsuche und BERT sind Long-Tail-Keywords wichtiger als je zuvor.

Diese Anleitung zur Integration von Long-Tail-Keyterms ist ein guter Anfang.

Spionieren Sie die Keywords Ihrer Konkurrenten aus

Wenn Ihre Konkurrenten in den Google-Suchergebnissen vor Ihnen rangieren, ist es an der Zeit, sie auszuspionieren.

Wenn der Suchalgorithmus sie mag, können Sie ihre Strategien lernen und kopieren.

Ich verwende hierfür gerne Google Keyword Planner, da ich damit die Keyword-Ziele der Wettbewerber genau einschätzen kann.

Nehmen wir an, Sie befinden sich in der Subnische "Überlebensmesser". Einer der Autoritätsblogs, die Sie ausspionieren könnten, ist Survivallife.com.

Geben Sie auf der Ubersuggest-Startseite anstelle eines Startschlüsselworts einfach die URL Ihres Konkurrenten in das Zielseitenfeld ein und klicken Sie auf "Suchen".

Scrollen Sie dann auf der Seite nach unten, bis "SEO Keywords" angezeigt wird. Sie sehen die Keywords, auf die Ihr Konkurrent abzielt.

Neben den Schlüsselwörtern umfassen andere Daten:

• Volumen: Die Anzahl der Suchanfragen, die das Keyword während eines Monats hat.
• Position: Die Position, für die die URL in der Google-Suche eingestuft ist.
• Geschätzte Besuche: Der geschätzte Verkehr, den die Webseite für das Keyword erhält.

Zum Beispiel ist Ihr Konkurrent die Nummer 1 für den Begriff „Überlebensleben“. Mit dem Spitzenplatz empfangen sie für die Laufzeit rund 395 Besucher pro Monat. Wenn es Ihnen also gelingt, sie zu überholen, wissen Sie, welche Art von Verkehr zu erwarten ist.

Dies funktioniert für jede Nische und kann Ihnen helfen, versteckte Keywords aufzudecken, die zur Verbesserung Ihres Rankings beitragen.

Steigern Sie Keywords mit niedrigerem Ranking

Wenn Sie Ihre Webseite auf Seite zwei finden, wie können Sie das Ranking auf die erste Seite von Google steigern?

Sie können die Wolkenkratzermethode verwenden, die von Brian Dean von Backlinko populär gemacht wurde.

Suchen Sie einen Beitrag oder Artikel, der bereits ein Ranking aufweist, verbessern Sie ihn und bewerben Sie ihn überall. Dies führte zu einem Anstieg des organischen Verkehrs um 457% für ihn.

Wenn Sie dies für Ihr Thema tun möchten (z. B. „Outsourcing-Leitfaden für kleine Unternehmen“), befolgen Sie diesen einfachen Leitfaden:

• Umfangreiche Recherche zum Thema, einschließlich Forschungsstudien.
• Identifizieren Sie die zu zielenden Keywords mithilfe der Strategien, die ich Ihnen in diesem Beitrag mitgeteilt habe.
• Schreiben Sie einen ausführlicheren Beitrag (der länger, genauer und umsetzbarer ist).
• Verlinken Sie auf Autoritätsblogs, die Outsourcing gut machen.

Stellen Sie sicher, dass Sie eine leistungsstarke und anklickbare Überschrift schreiben.

Zum Beispiel, wenn Ihre erste Überschrift lautet:

Outsourcing-Leitfaden für kleine Unternehmen

Sie können es folgendermaßen verbessern:

Der vollständige Leitfaden zum Outsourcing für kleine Unternehmen

Eine ausführliche Anleitung zum Auslagern für kleine Unternehmen

X Wege, wie Outsourcing Ihr kleines Unternehmen revolutionieren kann

Wenden Sie sich an die Blog-Eigentümer, die Sie in Ihrem Beitrag erwähnt haben, und bitten Sie sie, dies zu überprüfen. Hoffentlich erhalten Sie eine Handvoll Autoritätsseiten, auf die Sie zurückgreifen können.

Verwenden Sie die Keyword-Analyse, um den Inhalt zu verbessern

Lassen Sie uns eines klarstellen.

Es gibt kein optimales Verhältnis für die Platzierung von Schlüsselwörtern in einem Artikel.

Es ist jedoch von größter Bedeutung, die richtigen Keywords für das Targeting zu kennen. Dies ist die Grundlage für die Keyword-Analyse.

Wordstream definiert die Keyword-Analyse als:

Ausgangspunkt und Eckpfeiler von Suchmaschinenmarketingkampagnen. Durch das Verständnis, welche Anfragen qualifizierte Besucher Ihrer Website in Suchmaschinen abfragen, können Suchmaschinen-Vermarkter ihre Zielseiten besser anpassen, um die Conversion-Raten zu erhöhen.

Wenn Sie nicht wissen, welche Anfragen qualifizierte Besucher in Google eingeben, fällt es Ihnen schwer, Ihr Ranking und Ihre Conversion-Raten zu verbessern.

Inzwischen wissen Sie, wie Sie Keyword-Recherchen durchführen. Das ist der einfache Teil. Der schwierige Teil ist zu wissen, welche Keywords organischen Verkehr bringen.

Seit dem Google-Update "Nicht bereitgestellt" sind diese Informationen schwer zu bekommen. Diese Anleitung zum Entsperren nicht bereitgestellter Schlüsselwörter hilft Ihnen bei der Wiederherstellung einiger Daten. Heutzutage ist es jedoch unmöglich, einen vollständigen Überblick darüber zu erhalten, welche Begriffe den organischen Verkehr antreiben.

Sie möchten auf beliebte Keywords, Begriffe, für die Ihre Konkurrenten rangieren, und die Google-Fragen "Menschen stellen auch" achten.

Verwenden Sie diese Informationen, um On-Page-SEO-Inhalte zu schreiben, die der Absicht des Benutzers entsprechen (erinnern Sie sich daran?). Dadurch wird das Google-Ranking Ihrer Webseiten verbessert.

Wie sollten Sie Ihre Ziel-Keywords in den Inhalt einfügen?

Nehmen wir an, Sie möchten eine ausführliche Rezension zu "Best Senior Eisen für Senioren" schreiben. Hier sind einige Titel, die Sie verwenden könnten:

• Top 10 der besten Senioren für Senioren
• Einkaufsführer für die besten Senioren Bügeleisen für Senioren
• Beste Senioren Eisen für Senioren – Der ultimative Leitfaden

Um mit Ihrer Einführung zu beginnen, können Sie folgendermaßen beginnen:

Es gibt mehrere ältere Eisen auf dem Markt. Aber die richtige für Sie zu kennen, ist die schwierigste Entscheidung. If you read this guide from start to finish, you’ll know the best senior irons for seniors that are affordable and reliable.

Or, you could start your introduction by asking a question:

Do you want to find the best senior irons for seniors? This page will not just tell you about the irons but will show how to use them to improve your golf game and provide practical tips on getting a huge discount for your purchase.

Do you see how I placed the target keyword in the first paragraph, without making it seem like spam?

As I’ve said before, target a specific keyword in a natural manner – don’t just try to make it look natural.

Step #7: Increase Google Ranking With On-Page SEO

Now that you know which keywords you want to target – and should be targeting – to maximize your performance, you’re equipped to make meaningful on-page SEO changes.

Backlinko has an excellent guide that breaks down on-page SEO factors that will earn you big points with Google and your visitors.

Let’s break down a few key considerations.

Optimize Title Tags

Title tags are still a big part of determining how your site will perform.

Make sure every title tag is descriptive, unique, and catered to your targeted keywords.

Avoid using the same keywords and title tags over and over. This way, you’ll diversify your opportunities while avoiding cannibalizing your own efforts.

Say that you’re an ecommerce company. A good formula for your product pages could be:

(Product’s Name) – (Product’s Category) | (Brand Name)

So was:

Curly Hair Leave-in Conditioner – Hair Care | Diana’s DIY

Here are a few more title tag optimization tips:

• Use pipes ( | ) and dashes ( – ) between terms to maximize your real estate.
• Avoid ALL CAPS titles. They’re just obnoxious.
• Never keep default title tags like “Product Page” or “Home.” They trigger Google into thinking you have duplicate content, and they’re also not very convincing to users who are looking for specific information.
• Put the most important and unique keywords first.
• Don’t overstuff your keywords. Google increasingly values relevant, contextual, and natural strings over mechanical or forced keyword phrases.
• Put your potential visitors before Google – title tags can make-or-break traffic and conversions.

Keep in mind Google shows roughly 60 characters on a SERP, but don’t cut off if a longer title suits the page content. The search snippet title Google displays can be dynamic based on the search query.

So ultimately, you might be doing yourself a favor by getting more descriptive.

Plus, desktop snippet titles are limited by pixel width, while mobile display titles are typically longer.

Here’s an example from Hobo Web:

In the image above, Google displays as many characters as possible from the beginning. But in the image below, Google truncates the middle of the title to show the term “Hobo” at the end to show relevance to the user’s query.

While meta descriptions have negligible (if any) impact on your rankings, they still serve the important purpose of helping to determine your search snippet and adding an extra factor of uniqueness. This in turn can influence your click-through rate (CTR) from SERPs.

Check out this Kissmetrics article on making the most of meta descriptions for your CTRs.

Use Schema Markup (aka structured data markup)

Schema markup can be thought of as extra “labels” on information that tells Google what your content means. For example, let’s say my name appears on an article, so Google displays my name in a SERP entry.

But if I use the right schema around my name in the article’s HTML, I can indicate to Google that I’m the author of the article, not just another term in a sea of indistinguishable words.

Not only does schema markup help Google understand your website, it also makes a massive difference in attracting traffic to your website.

Schema helps give users more relevant information in a visually organized and aesthetic way.

Plus, featured snippets are featured more on mobile SERPs, which we discussed are more common in the U.S. than desktop searches.

Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper is a great tool for implementing schema markup on your site.

You can use schema tags to identify various types of SERP information, including:

• Artikel
• Bücherbewertungen
• Veranstaltungen
• Local businesses
• Filme
• Produkte
• Restaurants
• Rezepturen
• Software applications
• TV episodes
• TV episodes with ratings

This article offers a step-by-step schema markup tutorial to get you started.

Create a Sitemap to Improve Google Rankings

A sitemap tells search engines about the organization of your site’s content.

That way, when Googlebot reads the file, it can more intelligently crawl your content. This helps make it more readily available for ranking on SERPs.

Sitemaps also provide valuable metadata about pages on your site like when they were last updated, how often you make changes, and how the page relates to other pages on your site.

You can use XML-sitemaps.com, a simple sitemap generator. If you use WordPress, there are several site map generator plugins as well.

Once you have your sitemap, check out my article on XML Sitemap to download your sitemap file, put it into the domain root folder of your website, and add the sitemap URL to your Google Webmaster account.

Now that we’ve covered some key on-page SEO factors, it’s time to discuss how to differentiate your brand from good to great with unique, strategic, and purposeful content.

Step #8: Use Keywords to Create Better Content

Although I’ve touched a bit on keyword research and placement already, in this section, we’ll look more at going leveraging those keywords that you’ve researched.

Sadly, a lot of people misunderstand the purpose keyword research and placement.

Even before Google rolled out their first Google Panda update, the best search marketers knew that quality, valuable, and useful content should target a particular group of people.

Optimize for informational keywords and improve your search ranking by writing resourceful and detailed content while supplementing it with descriptive meta description and title tags.

This process attracts raving fans, gets your content shared on social media platforms, and garners relevant and high-authority links naturally.

If you want to write resourceful and detailed content, follow the guide below:

Use Data-Driven Articles

According to ConversionXL, data-driven approach can increase your traffic.

Back up facts with accurate data so that people will see your content as authoritative and share it on social media, expanding your organic reach. This post on how to create and promote an infographic is an example of data-driven content.

Other examples of data-driven content include:

The Science of Productivity
5 Things You’re Measuring Incorrectly with Digital Analytics and What To Do About It
7 Proven Strategies To Increase Your Blog’s Traffic By 206%

The resources below will help you to backup your content with accurate data:

Aim to include newer stats — less than three years old is ideal.

You can even micro-target content. For example, if a blogger experiments with niche marketing, take it a step further and try niche marketing with an aged domain name, then write it up.

Use Storytelling

Stories can captivate your audience, evoke emotions, and improve your conversion rate.

Here’s how to tell a story that captivates your audience:

Begin with something unique: Start your story with a unique message that resonates with your audience. Ideally, this should connect with your audience’s questions or pain points.

Infuse Your Own Experiences: It’s called a story for a good reason. Use your own experiences (whether good or bad) as part of the message. No fakery allowed!

Jon Morrow used this on-page SEO content technique to grow his blog to 1,740 loyal subscribers in just seven days. Here’s the post that helped him connect with his audience: How To Quit Your Job, Move To Paradise, and Get Paid To Change The World.

Add a Call-to-Action (CTA): Every story must have an ending. Once you capture your readers’ attention, they expect you to share the solution. After all, your story is supposed to solve a problem, not nurture it.

Use a call-to-action link or button to lead people to your funnel and convert them. MatchOffice increased its conversion rate by 14.79% by changing its CTA copy.

Unbounce provides some more examples of actionable CTA buttons to replace your generic ones:

Write Shareable Headlines

Google has made a lot of changes to search rankings, but one element remains crucial: the headline.

If you write a shareable headline for your post, nothing can stop it from getting clicked, read, and shared by true fans.

Peep Laja of ConversionXL increased his conversion rate by changing the word “today” to “now” in a headline. It also helped him increase sales by 332%.

Headlines truly win the clicks.

Even if your web page is ranked at #1 in Google for page content, that doesn’t mean you’ll get the most clicks.

On-page SEO gets you in the running but the title can convert impressions to clicks.

Let’s search for the term how to outsource. Note that the most clickable headline is in position #2.

The perfect example of a website that uses shareable headlines to boost conversion rate is Upworthy.

I’ve used Buzzsumo to analyze Upworthy’s headlines. Check out the amazing number of shares the first article has racked up.

If I wanted to craft a better headline for my own content, here’s what I’d do:

Add numbers: Upworthy’s post was shared over 1.6 million times on Facebook because it has a definite number. If the headline was “Americans are Completely Wrong About This Mind-Blowing Fact,” I’m sure the total number of social media shares would be lower.

Here are some more examples. When I wrote this post, these headlines were ranked in the Google top 10 for their respective keywords. But, a simple tweak would result in a higher click-through rate.

Original headline:

SEO Basics For Optimizing Your Site

Let’s add some numbers:

• 6 SEO Basic Tips For Optimizing Your Site
• 12 SEO Basics You Need To Optimize Your Site

Original headline:

• Freelance Writing Tips For Stay-at-Home Moms
• Freelance Writing Jobs To Make Money

Let’s add some numbers

• 5 Freelance Writing Tips To Help Stay at Home Moms Make Money
• 10 Freelance Writing Jobs You Can Make Money From

Invoke Curiosity: Curiosity will cause people to click your headline, but do it with caution and make sure that you deliver on the promise of your headline with quality content.

For example, if your title is:

Top 7 Body Building Secrets You Didn’t Know

Then make sure that you reveal the ‘7’ secrets, and ideally, what you reveal needs to be new or unique.

Create a Multimedia Experience

While regular blogging is important, don’t settle there.

Hone in on your keywords to learn the questions that brought your visitors to your site. Then use diverse types of content to answer those questions, like:

• Videos
• Anleitungen
• Ebooks
• Infografiken
• Webinare
• Demos
• Checklists
• Email series
• Animierte GIFs
• Comics
• Podcasts

For a comprehensive list, see HubSpot’s 20 types of lead generation content, as well as 14 types of experimental content that you should try out.

Abolish Duplicate Content

Use tools like Copyscape, SiteLiner, and Screaming Frog to make sure you’re not repeating yourself.

While the occasional duplicate content won’t destroy your rankings, you’ll be doing yourself a favor by showing Google each piece of content is original, relevant, and useful.

Once you have great on-page SEO content that includes informational and transactional keywords and tells a story that appeals to your audience, it’s time to build links the right way to improve Google rankings.

Step #9: Build Links the Right Way

Earlier, I showed you how to analyze links to your site using SEOprofiler.

Here’s another analysis I did for Business Insider’s site.

Note that it shows a range of different types of anchor text for inbound links.

That’s exactly what you need to build links the right way and improve Google rankings.

Here are some of the ways to do that and the types of links that you need.

Anchor text linking (in-text links): Anchor text links are simple links that appear within the content. See an example below…

I’ve found placing anchor text links “above-the-fold,” can increase conversion rates.

The anchor text linking strategy is mostly used when you’re looking to rank for a particular keyword.

You can use your target keyword as anchor text, but to be on the safe side and avoid penalties with the search algorithm, mix it up with generic keywords.

For example, if your primary keyword is digital camera reviews, when building your links from another site, link naturally like this: find the best digital camera reviews, top digital camera brands, etc.

A good mix is smart on-page SEO.

Internal Links: External links (that is links from other sites to yours) are important, but internal links are also important. Make sure to link to important internal pages using optimized anchor text when it makes sense.

Editorial Links: Creating useful content and sharing it through social media naturally results in valuable inbound links.

A good example is the post on 200 ranking factors that Brian Dean wrote. It’s been cited multiple times.

For Google, what other people say about you is much more important and relevant than what you say about yourself to improve Google rankings.

Over the years, I have created thousands of rich, data-driven, and useful blog content.

If you search for anything related to content marketing, Quick Sprout and neilpatel.com pop up, which means that I get a lot of editorial links.

Copyblogger links out to useful and relevant resource posts that contribute to the engagement that they already have with their audience.

I strongly believe that the site owners didn’t do anything to get those editorial links.

They simply earned the links because of the usefulness of their content. Focus on exceptional content if you want to earn links that will improve the rank of your web pages.

Scale link building: Link diversity is the ultimate way to generate Google-friendly links and improve Google rankings while staying off the penalty radar.

This tutorial from SEMrush will show you how to ethically build links to improve Google ranking.

Old techniques, like directory submission, forum marketing, wiki sites, and even guest blogging and press releases don’t work and they also put you at risk for a Google penalty.

To get a diverse inbound link profile, write page content that will gain links from local, regional, and international sites relevant to your own.

Then, you’ll build a natural link profile with natural, targeted on-page SEO that will withstand anything Google throws at it.

Conclusion

Unlocking the Google search ranking has a certain level of mystique. The key to unlocking higher Google rankings without getting slapped with a penalty boils down to being useful and memorable.

Take the time truly understand your target audience and their desires.

Do the research needed to identify the long-tail keywords they’re using to get to your site.

Once you have this info, you can create killer content to meet their needs, solve their problems, and keep them coming back for more.

Keep churning out great content and promoting it with all you’ve got.

Lather, rinse, repeat, and you’ll dominate search engines while avoiding Google penalties from algorithm updates.

How did your site do in the most recent Google update? Did you see any change in rankings, traffic, and conversions?

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