Google Ranking – How Does It Work?
With the nowadays fast lifestyle and accessibility of information, most people use Google as an online source to find and evaluate businesses and information that they are looking for. However, most of them won’t scroll past the first page of results, which is a big challenge as well as opportunity for companies – if you do not appear on the top results page, you most likely lose a majority of potential leads. On the other hand, if you do appear on the top search results for a specific keyword, you can be almost 100% sure that your target client will find you on the internet once they start looking for the niche you specialise in. Nevertheless, being pushed to the top page results on Google is a very comprehensive, and multi-factor dependent process. But we are here to guide you through the first few steps that you must do before you even start to think of investing any money in SEO, as you can do it for free!
In this article, we’ll present you a few simple but effective strategies that will help you rank higher on Google. Apply them to your business website, and you will quickly notice that those strategies do matter for Google algorithms that will be pushing your website higher on search results.
Understanding Algorithms
Understanding how Google’s algorithms work is the first step in optimising your website for better search engine rankings. By aligning your content with these algorithms, you can significantly improve your site’s visibility. There are multiple ways to do this:
1. Start by rewriting your website’s content so that it is highly relevant to your target audience’s search queries. This involves thorough keyword research to identify the terms your potential customers are using and incorporating those keywords naturally into your content.
How to Rank Higher on Google in 2 Steps
Within the outlined goals mentioned above, here are two free tactics that will help Google rank your website higher in search results. So read them carefully and apply them today!
Use the Right Keywords
Simply put, keywords are the words you enter into a search engine to find what you’re looking for. When you hit enter, Google scans its index of billions of websites to find the pages that best match the query. It then ranks those pages, in large part, based on their relevance to the keywords. That’s why when you search “Best SEO Agencies near me”, you won’t see a list of cooking recipes on the results page.
So now, knowing what keywords are, you must first do your keyword research, which is essentially figuring out which keywords your target customer uses in search engines to learn about topics related to your product and business. Then, you’ll need to place those keywords strategically within your organic content to push your website higher.
If you want to learn how to find the best practices for finding your keywords and topics to write about on your website, visit our Instagram account where we teach more in detail all the tips and tricks to apply the best SEO strategies.
Create a List of Seed Keywords - Keyword Research
To make the process very straightforward for you, just start by writing a list of terms people might search to find your business and learn about related topics.
If we’re marketing a SEO Agency, that might look like:
- SEO Agency in London
- Search Engine Optimisation Services
- SEO Audit
- Website Optimisation
- Best SEO Practices
- How much does website SEO cost
- How to audit your website
- How to rank higher on Google
Create a list of 20 to 30 terms like that. They don’t need to be perfect for now, as this is the first step. Now, we will find the exact phrases potential clients actually put in the search bar on Google.
Understand Keyword Intent
Refining previously created Seed List is simply just understanding the keyword intent behind each search term.
Generally speaking, there are four types of keyword intent: Informational, Commercial, Transactional, and Navigational. Notice how each intent comes with a different set of expectations.
Here’s the intent behind our cat grooming keywords:
- SEO Agency in London (commercial)
- Search Engine Optimisation Services (commercial)
- Best SEO Practices (informational)
- What is SEO Audit (informational)
- Website Optimisation (commercial)
- How much does website SEO cost (transactional)
- How to audit your website (informational)
- How to rank higher on Google (informational)
Your goal is to match the type of content to the searchers’ intent. People searching for “SEO Agency” want to find a place that provides that service; a sales page or ad for your office will meet that intent. For example, the page you create for “How to audit your website” should be an instructional blog post or video rather than a sales message.
However, it doesn’t mean that some keywords cannot have multiple intents. Take “website optimisation,” as an example. It could be either people looking for services of website optimisation (transactional) or people who want to gain knowledge about what exactly it is and how to improve it by themselves (informational).
What you can do to better understand the real intent of the users, you can read the Google results. If the top results for a keyword are informational blog posts (usually informational or educational intent), then you should create the same type of content.
Use a Keyword Tools
Now,
we’re ready to use keyword suggestion tools and here I have a few
recommendations for you – some of them are free, but some require also a fee:
- Google Search
- ConsoleSemrush.com
- Ahrefs.com
- Answerthepublic.com
Enter one of your seed keywords into the tool. It’ll
surface a list of related keywords and show how many people search for it
monthly (known as “search volume”). You’ll also see the competition level (how
difficult it is to rank for that keyword). Ideally, you want to target keywords
with high search volume but low to moderate competition. Keyword research tools
can help you prioritise which keywords to target and generate new ideas for
additional content.
Use Short-tail and Long-tail Keywords
Short-tail keywords are search terms with one to three words. They often get a lot of traffic but are also very competitive and hard to rank for. Long-tail keywords are longer queries. They are more specific, usually get fewer monthly searches, and can be much easier to rank for, as there is lower competition.
Here’s an example. The short-tail keyword “website audit” is searched thousands of times each month. But it’s also very competitive, with well-known websites fighting for result page supremacy.
The long-tail keyword “how to audit your business website at home” doesn’t get nearly as many searches, but it’s much less competitive. Overall, long-tail keywords drive the majority of traffic from Google, offering many opportunities for your business to rank higher on Google.
You can use your keyword tool to find long-tail keywords. Or try Google here. Type a short-tail keyword in the search bar and look at the dropdown of suggested search queries.
Those are terms other people search regularly. Place them in your keyword tool to see their search volume and difficulty.
Don’t forget about Local Keywords
Nearly a one third of people use Google to find local businesses multiple times per week. That is why local keywords are the terms people use in those geographically dependant queries.
For example, when someone wants to hire a SEO Agency, they might search for:
- SEO Agency in London
- SEO Agency near me
- London SEO Agency for B2B
Local Keyword Research is similar to other keyword research with one main difference – local keywords usually have a transactional or commercial intent, meaning the people searching want to learn about products and services. Therefore, your seed keywords should revolve around what you provide and where you provide it.
Place Keywords in the Right Places
Placing keywords strategically will help Google quickly understand and categorise your web pages. Make sure to include keywords in:
- The page title and title tags
- Headings and subheadings (H1, H2, H3 or H4)
- Alt text for images
- Page URL
- Meta Desciption
- In the main body of the content
Keyword placement is an integral part of on-page SEO: the collection of things you do to your web pages so they have the best chance of ranking.
Fill your Site with High-quality Content
The more content you place on your website, the more helpful it will be to your audience, and the more you will convince Google that it belongs at the top of a search result. But you can’t just write anything. What you publish must be genuinely helpful and high-quality, or Google will not show your site to searchers (which is the waste of time and resources).
Use the E-E-A-T Strategy
Quality can be a very subjective term. To make it more objective, Google algorithms that rate content quality follow a system called E-E-A-T, which stands for:
- Experience: Does the content show first-hand experience with the topic?
- Expertise: Is the content created by someone with knowledge of the topic?
- Authority: Do related, trusted websites link to your content?
- Trust: Does your website provide accurate information and deal with user information ethically?
To find more in-depth explanation of how to meet E-E-A-T requirements, read our other blog post here. But generally what you need to keep in mind is to create helpful content from reliable sources that’s factual and, when possible, based on your first-hand experience.
Mind your Keyword Density
Keyword Destiny is a metric that describes the number of times a keyword appears compared to the total number of words on a webpage (usually shown as a percentage). If a keyword appears 20 times on a 1,000-word page, the keyword density is 2%.
There’s no strict rule for keyword density, in fact it can be also very comprehensive but also influential to the general website performance, but a common goal is to use your keyword once per 200 words. That’s enough to help Google understand the topic without looking spammy.
With that in mind, what you don’t want to do is to artificially stuff keywords into your web pages. Google has long since caught on to that game and will penalise your site if you do!
Instead, look for ways to include keywords organically in the flow of your copy and headers.
Focus on Evergreen Content
It’s good to keep your readers informed about industry news and updates. But the majority of your content should be evergreen—that is, content based on topics that are relevant for a long time and are searched for over and over again. This type of content will steadily gain traffic over time rather than spike and flatten out quickly.
Examples of evergreen content include:
- Tutorials and how-tos
- 101’s on fundamental industry concepts
- Case studies and success stories
- Tips and tricks
- Checklists
- Best practices
- Tool and resource lists
- Common mistakes/dos and don’ts
- FAQs
