Improving your organic page ranking is one of the primary pillars that determine the digital performance of your business. A better ranking implies more traffic on your website. A good website alone isn’t enough to drive the target audience to your business. You need to rank your organic page according to the Google guidelines to stay on top of the search results page.
To improve the ranking of your page, Search Engine Optimization or SEO strategies should be implemented. These strategies fall under the wide area of digital marketing that help you appear on the top of the search results. Without strong SEO tricks, your website would tend to rank lower, generating less traffic and a lower conversion rate.
10 Impactful Steps to Rank Your Page
To improve your organic page ranking, we have listed down 10 impactful steps that should be covered by your SEO to make sure that your business’ page appears on top of the Google rankings of relevant results.
1. Plan a backlink strategy by understanding Google’s algorithm
Google updates its search engine algorithms almost regularly and you need to check and adjust your SEO techniques accordingly. For example, a recent study shows that Google algorithms favor websites that are mobile-friendly. Google would rank your pages as per these algorithms and would offer better results if it is updated at par with the recent cycles.
To see these changes, you can have a close look at the data derived from Google Analytics. A big change in the outcome often indicates that you need to adhere to the current algorithms to increase your organic page ranking.
Once you have comprehended these patterns, you need to build a strong backlinking strategy. Backlinks serve as a direct link to your official website from other sites. The number of backlinks used by you is directly proportional to the traffic generated on your website. However, you need to maintain the quality of the backlinks. Sites that are known for spam, if used for backlinking, would bring negative results. Thus, you need to ensure that the sites you are using are reliable and authoritative in nature. The domain authority of the sites must be checked and if the DA is similar to your website, it would be easier to compete.
2. Update your website with unique and rich content
Google does not recognize the sites that are not at par with the algorithms of an authoritative website. In fact, it pushes down the rankings of such sites. Thus, it is important to create rich and authentic content for your page to improve its rankings on the search results page. The content you write for your website is one of the primary determinants of your business’ performance. While developing the content for your website, you should refer to reliable services that would conduct strong keyword research.
The content for the website to be ranked needs to be relevant, informative, and flexible. Every page on the website should be filled with efficient content, written and graphics. Attractive and original; content would generate higher click-through rates. Every page plays its part in improving the website ranking, so make sure that you deliver the right content through every page.
3. Fix your page’s load time
A website that takes a longer time to load harms the overall performance in two ways, which are:
- Google detects the lagging pace and would interrupt the ranking of your website to the top
- A slower website would hamper the audience’s click-through rate and would increase the chances of abandonment.
Both these factors are closely-linked and as searchers don’t interact with your website, the rankings tend to go down eventually and vice versa. As per Amazon, a slow-paced website might cause a loss of up to 1.6 billion sales in a year. According to recent studies, 40% of searchers tend to abandon websites that take more than 3.5 seconds to load and the majority do not return to it.
Thus, you shall fix and adjust your website’s load time as per the algorithms to generate more converting traffic.
4. Strategic image optimization
A website that uses more graphics and images is more likely to attract more potential customers than a website that is solely dependent on written content. It is crucial to use relevant images on your website. However, you need to optimize these images in such a way that it escalates the page rankings. Optimized images might also improve the page loading time.
While using images, you need to check for certain factors like file size and format to boost the organic page rankings. Large images take a longer time to load, thus decreasing the page’s performance. You need to compress the images to the required size that wouldn’t hinder the page rankings. Conduct effective keyword research for images and add the terms to the title, tags, caption, and many more areas. This would improve the rankings as the images and written content direct the searchers to the same platform.
The website content would be in vain without proper header tags. Such content does not appeal to the audience as it decreases readability. Therefore, the content needs to be formatted with the right header tags to perform to the fullest. It even enables the audience to spend more time on the website. People tend to return to websites with good readability and relevant header tags.
Header tags break the content on the web pages into sections, increasing readability. SEO rankings usually amps up websites that use relevantly strong keywords in the header tags. This, eventually, improves the organic ranking of your pages.
6. Adjust page formatting
Page formatting is not an ‘additional nice-to-have but is a necessity in this competitive era for businesses. A well-formatted page with a user-friendly interface shall attract more traffic to the website, thus increasing the rankings. A clean layout with required formatting improves the dwell time on your website.
You shall ensure that your website is clean and not too crowded with irrelevant and recurring content. For this purpose, you need to hire a well-reputed website development agency. While formatting the content on your website, use precise sentences and bullet points to highlight the key elements instead of long paragraphs which decrease readability.
Refrain from cluttering your page with too much written and visual content. Also, reduce the number of advertisements. Thus, it shall create more audience engagement and improve the rankings.
7. Create strong meta description content
A meta description serves as a sneak peek into the content delivered by your web pages. This section is displayed under the web title on the search results page on Google. This area is highly influential in determining whether the searcher would click on the link or not. Thus, it needs to be well-versed and concise to encourage the users to visit your website.
A convincing meta description can boost the click-through rate. The keywords to be inserted in the meta description must align with the searcher’s queries. Hence, you must perform detailed keyword research to appeal to the audience through the meta description.
Thus, it is recommendable to use target-specific meta descriptions for your web pages to rank them well.
8. Check for duplicate content
Google tends to push down the rankings of websites that use duplicate content, that is, the same content if it’s available on many URLs. This issue is prevalent in every industry, especially the eCommerce businesses. This type of content harms the page rankings.
There are two common types of duplicate content issues that need to be addressed.
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On-site duplicate content
The on-site duplicate content issue arises when there is the redundancy of similar content on different or same pages on the website domain. This duplicate content would hinder the ranking of the website on the Search Results page as it does not follow the latest Google algorithms.
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Off-site duplicate content
When identical content is used by two or more websites, this problem arises. To check that your content isn’t identical to the content on any other website, use reliable plagiarism checkers.
Both the issues can disrupt the website’s performance through organic ranking and must be looked into upon detection through a detailed audit.
9. Content optimization for ‘People also ask’ ranking
The Search Engine Results Page or SERPs features another section called ‘People also ask’, which is different from the 10 search result links which appear on the first page of the results. SEO must be used in such a way that it benefits from the maximum features of google rankings. This People-Also-Ask or PAA category would show results of relevant content to the searcher, besides the ranked links.
There are three primary reasons for which PPA must be attended to:
- It can help you appear more than once on the SERPs. Unlike the featured snippets, it can help you almost dominate the first page through efficient ranking, thus reducing your competitor’s scope.
- They can help you make your presence on the SERPs by answering the direct queries of the searcher. Usually, 75% of the users tend to click on the first three results of the PAA.
- They offer relevant answers to the search that Google might fail to interpret. This, in turn, would generate more leads as the searcher clicks on the links.
Given the current competitive spectrum of every industry, PPA can be highly advantageous if you know your SEO.
10. Customize for core web Vitals
According to Google, Core Web Vitals, a subset of the web vitals, ‘represent a distinct facet of the user experience, is measurable in the field and reflects the real-world experience of a critical user-centric outcome’. In other words, are a collection of algorithms based on speed, responsiveness, and visual stability.
These vitals are broadly defined in three aspects, namely:
- First Input Delay (FID)- It is classified by the time taken by a page to become interactive. It is usually 100 milliseconds for a well-ranked website.
- Largest contentful paint (LCP)- This is the time taken by the main content of the web page to function. It is usually 2.5 seconds or less.
- Cumulative Layout Shifts (CLS)- It is the unexpected amount of layout shift of the web page’s content, generally less than 0.01
Therefore, optimizing the website for core web vitals can drastically improve the organic page rankings if done by a certified and experienced SEO expert.
Summing up, the aforementioned steps can highly benefit your web page’s rankings. If you want your website to rank well according to the Google algorithms, you shall seek help from certified SEO experts with notable experience in this field. SEO is a wide spectrum that needs skillful implementation. Once you have achieved this, your website would appear on top through organic page ranking, which eventually would generate more leads and convert traffic.
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