Last Updated on December 1, 2020
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Would you like to learn how to rank higher on Google?
I have compiled 7 critical tips to implement for you to achieve higher google ranking.
Follow me closely.
In case you want to jump to a particular section, here is a list of what is covered in this post.
- Website Speed
- User Experience – A sure way of getting your website to the top Google
- Long tail Keywords
- How to move up on google search with CTR
- Backlinks must be relevant and authoritative
- Is your website secure (Https)?
- On-page Optimization
1. Website Speed
The time it takes for your website to load is critical to your google ranking. Two quick factors to work on here.
- Your hosting plan must provide faster server response time than that of your competitors
- The images on your website must be optimized to load quickly
Your Hosting Speed Plays a Role in How to Rank Higher on Google
If you already have a hosting plan, you need to check it’s speed. If you are happy, you can stay.
If not, you can pack your bags and tell your hosting plan provider that you’re moving on. It is not as complicated as you may think. The hosting plan provider you are moving to will practically facilitate the tech issues.
So, what speeds are we talking about here?
Since you want to rank on google, its only prudent to abide by their standard.
Google says the optimal server response time is 200ms. If your hosting company provides anything slower than that, your website is most likely sluggish.
One way to find out your hosting company’s server speed is to use bitcatcha.
It’s a simple tool to use. Just type in your website address and the tool will tell you shortly about the speed of your hosting.
So go to bitcatcha right now in the link provided above and audit your hosting.
To those who do not have a hosting plan yet, what do you do?
Easy. You can make a decision from this very site which hosting plan to buy.
Bear in mind that there are other factors that should lead you to pick on a particular hosting plan. Of course one of them is price. As usual.
But our focus here is how to rank higher on google.
And price of your hosting plan is not a google ranking factor but hosting server speed is.
So to those wanting to buy a hosting plan, here is a list of some of the top performing webhosts.
I think now we have gotten hosting out of the way.
Let’s turn to images.
Optimized Images Assists in How to Rank Higher on Google
I’m sure you know that images are great for your website posts or articles.
They will definitely help you to rank in google search.
But because images are heavy, they can negatively impact on the loading speed of your site. So before you upload images to your site, you need to optimize them for quick loading.
That can be done by reducing image size. There is a cool tool you can use for that.
It will literally compress your image from 30% to 50%. That is as good as cutting the image size by half. And that will drastically increase the speed of your website.
The tool we are talking about is TinyPNG. The good thing is, there is a generous limit to use this tool free of charge.
So go ahead and use the tool for your next website article or post. You will be amazed at how much it compresses your images without distorting the quality of your images.
2. User Experience – A sure way of getting your website to the top of google
What experience do visitors to your website have?
Do they click away a moment after they land on your page?
User experience is a critical google ranking factor. And one metric to consider here is dwell time.
How long does someone stay on your website page? The point is, the longer someone stays on your page, the better your page will rank is search engine results.
The simple question is, how can you improve dwell time of your site? And the simple answer is content.
One thing you need to do is have long engaging content. However, it is not just a matter of focusing on quantity but also quality.
VALUE is what we are talking about. What value are you providing your website visitor?
The content of your page should by all means seek to address the issue in the title of that page.
Here is a quick tip on how you can proceed. Go to google and search for the keyword you want to rank for.
Check out the top 10 competitors by going to their websites. Analyse their content and get the average word count.
If the average word count is around 1000, you would want to aim for 1200 to 1500 word count of quality content. Value is key.
Your desire is to have better content than your competitors have. Strive to provide a better user experience than them.
That way, google will start to love you more and put you up the rank.
Now this cannot just end at providing longer content. You will not just thrust a massive block of text into the face of your visitor.
That, surely is not a way of how to rank higher on google. Your visitors will definitely bounce away from your site.
Because in today’s day and age, people want to see images and videos.
In your analysis of your top 10 competitors, it’s very likely that they have images and videos in their content.
So you also need to break up your content with images and videos. Let the users stop scrolling and check out your images.
Give them something to interact with and you will improve the user experience of your website.
Today there are a lot of websites where you can get free stock images that speak to your content. Here is a list of some of the cool websites you can get images from.
As for videos, you need to use either your videos or other people’s videos.
You can use other people’s videos by embedding a YouTube video into your content.
You can also find free stock videos even from some of the websites I have listed above. But as a content provider, it’s important to make your own videos.
There are many programs you can use. Here is a list of some. They may have free and paid plans.
There are also some good paid video makers like Movavi, Filmora and Content Samurai.
I love content samurai as it is very easy and very fast to make a video. Especially explainer videos.
All you have to do is upload your script and content samurai will automatically create scenes for you in a few seconds.
3. Long Tail Keywords
Long tail keywords are very important to push you up the ladder of how to rank higher on google.
If you try to rank for the most competitive keyword, you may fail terribly.
For example, if you want to target the keyword “google ranking,” you will have difficulties ever ranking for such a keyword.
However, when you target long tail keywords you have higher chances of ranking.
So instead of “google ranking” you can as an example target the following long tail keywords;
“how to improve google search ranking”
“how to rank higher in google search results” or
“how to get to the top of google without paying.”
With such long tail keywords, chances of your likelihood to rank for them are higher.
So when you have the long tail keyword you are targeting, you want to put it in your title. You also want to put it in the body of your article at least two, three or several times depending on the length of your article.
You will make a mistake if you overdo it as google is smart enough to pick that out.
Your job then is to find long tail keywords that you can target. There are many keyword tools on the market.
Some of them are paid tools while others are free. Like google planner. It’s free and you can get great keywords from it.
So here is a quick list of keyword tools you can use.
4. How to move up on google search with CTR
CTR is click through rate. Nowadays it’s an important ranking factor on google.
When somebody searches your keyword, you must make a good impression.
Your keyword must be nicely crafted into your title. You must have a good meta description.
Your focus is to make it clickable. But please, shy away from click bait titles.
Click bait titles will end up harming your site as your visitors will quickly turn away. Thus increasing your bounce rate.
Your content should also be engaging. If your site has been up for a while, you can use google console to determine your CTR.
When you go to web masters dashboard on google console, your click through rate is shown.
Even the keywords you are showing up for are given to you. So you can take some of those key words and sprinkle them into your content.
That way, you have a chance of getting some more clicks from those keywords and start ranking for them as well.
This will boost up your overall click through rate. Google will then start noticing that people are loving your website and start pushing it up the search results.
5. Backlinks must be relevant and authoritative
Backlinks are still a major ranking factor.
You must endeavor to build a natural backlink profile.
One thing you must know is that google has been around for a while. And you will not fool them easily.
So if you think by spamming your website with crappy backlinks you’ll get to rank your site, you’re wasting your time.
How then does one build a natural backlink profile?
Well the first thing you ought to do is to build profiles on social networks. Then as you share content you start linking back to random pages on your website.
After this, you’ll start doing blog comments. Find blogs relevant to your niche and start making comments on them.
Again there is no need for spamming. Just be natural because google expects a natural velocity of backlinks.
From blog commenting you can now move on to forum commenting. Once you have been through these three forms of backlinks you can now start building strong backlinks.
You can start doing guest posting or maybe private blog networks.
6. Is your website secure (Https)?
Go to google right now and make a search for any keyword.
Tell me if you will find any website in the first ten pages which has no https.
So that certainly tells you something. Website security is important in the eyes of google.
If you are using Chrome browser and your site is not Https, it will appear as “Not secure” site as shown in the image below.
Now tell me who likes browsing a site that is branded “Not secure.”
Chances are that your bounce rate will increase and you won’t be anywhere near the first page of google.
So how do you make your website secure?
You need to ask your hosting provider to add an SSL(Secure Sockets Layer) certificate to your domain.
If you are on WordPress, you can then use a plugin like Really Simple SSL to make your site SSL proof. A valid SSL is an assurance that information shared on that site will be transmitted in an encrypted safe way.
Most hosting providers are now providing SSL certificate for free. If you are still paying for it may be it’s a signal to shift camp and try other hosting providers.
There are other free ways though that can be used to secure your site. If you are on WordPress you can check out this video below on one way of achieving this.
7. On-Page Optimization
On-Page optimization is the last tip I’m giving you on how to rank higher on Google.
It is part of the technical components of SEO. Issues to do with on-page optimization impact on your ranking.
If you want your content to be found faster by search engines and users, you better ensure your website is optimized.
Two things that we can look at quickly are metadata and internal link structure.
Metadata is the information about your site that is displayed in the search engine results pages(SERPs).
This may include title tags and page descriptions. So you better pay attention on how you craft that.
Internal link structure assists users and search engines to find your content easily.
So the strategy for linking to other pages should be focusing on the experience you want the user to have.
So there you are. I hope you have learnt one or two things on how to rank higher on Google.
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