Are you struggling to rank higher on Google? I have been there too, there is no meaning of ranking on the second page of Google, no one goes there, anyone can simply relate to this.
I have successfully ranked on the first page of Google and the feeling I got after executing all the hard work to not just rank on the first page of Google results, to also rank on the first position on Google results is a great feeling of achievement.
The best way to describe my feeling and to provide value to my readers is by writing this blog post so you can also rank higher on Google. This is all the work I have done to successfully rank my blog post on the top page of Google search results.
So the question is, if I can, why not you can? So let’s get started with the definitive guide on How to rank higher on Google in 2022:
Write A Blog With Clear Mindset To Rank Higher On Google
The common mistake content writers make is they write a blog post to impress Google, not the readers. If you want to rank on the top page of Google, Write human first, SEO second content.
Write the content to provide great value to the readers
If your mindset is to write a blog post just so that it can rank on the top page of Google and you can activate Google Adsense through it, then you are living in a fantasy world, it doesn’t happen in the real world scenario. So the first step is to have a correct mindset to provide value to your readers and I promise your blog will rank higher on Google in 2022 on the top page of Google search results if your intention is clear.
Make sure to read this article carefully to the end, don’t skip anything or you might lose on some important details.
Have Patience – Do Some Search Engine Optimization
As you know, to rank on the top page of Google your page needs to be very well SEO optimized, in simple words, Google asks you to follow some steps based on their algorithms so it can rank your blog in the right position on search results.
Remember you don’t have to overcomplicate things in SEO and you don’t even have to do an online course for it. SEO is simple for those who understand the true logic behind it and are ready to learn it from their own experience.
What I’m about to share with you next are proven steps to rank on the top page of Google and you can also rank in 1st position if you follow these steps carefully.
Before we go ahead here is the screenshot below for my blog post ranking on the first page on the first position on Google for keyword best digital agency WordPress themes:
Note: Ranking goes ups and down based on the competition and the demographics, so as you are reading this blog post, you might see a different ranking on your system for this keyword, but the screenshot above is proof that the steps I’m sharing with you helped me to rank my blog post on the first position on Google, if I can rank with these steps, then you can too. Keep reading.
Step 1: On-Page SEO: Start With Keyword Research
Keywords are just the important words that people are searching for on search engines like Google. Google picks and indexes valuable content through keywords, so it won’t automatically rank on Google when you write a valuable blog post.
After writing a blog post, the second step is to place the right keywords on your blog Title, Headings, Main content of your blog post, Images, and Meta description so Google can easily find you.
How To Do Keyword Research Efficiently
Keyword Research is a strategic long-term process, you will need a free or premium keyword research tool. If you don’t have the budget to go for premium keyword research tools like Semrush and Ahrefs and free tools like AnswerthePublic and Ubersuggest can help you with your basic keyword research strategy.
UberSuggest is also a very popular tool that you can use for your keyword research strategy, but it offers limited searches per day and also very limited keyword results until you switch to the premium version of it.
My favorite free keyword research tool is AnswerthePublic.You just have to go to their website and write the keyword you want to rank for, and it will suggest you thousands of keywords based on your query. To make your task easier, it also suggests the questions that people are searching on Google.
Note: Free tools offer limited free search daily, so I advise you to use it wisely or switch to their premium version.
On the other hand, for a long-term successful keyword research strategy, it is recommended to go for a premium tool like Ahrefs or Semrush.
My favorite premium tool is Ahrefs, it is an all-in-one tool for all your keyword research and SEO needs.
Here is the video to show you how I use Ahrefs Keyword Explorer tool to get the right organic keywords to rank my blog post on the first page of Google for Keyword “Best Digital Agency WordPress themes”
To use Ahrefs efficiently for your keyword research:
- Paste the top-ranking competitor’s blog post URL on Ahrefs site explorer then click on organic keywords.
- It will show you the keywords they are using to rank on the top page of Google. You can place these keywords on your blog posts as these are the most important keywords.
- Remember that the trick here is to learn from your competitors, this is a very smart strategy and it won’t take a lot of time on a hectic keyword research process. Just don’t try to stuff a lot of keywords.
- Only place keywords on your blog that are relevant to the title and content of your page.
- You can also track the rankings of keywords through “Rank Tracker” in Ahrefs.
Bonus Tip #1: Must Include Few LSI Keywords
LSI keywords are simply the “Related searches” or “People also ask for” keywords that are very important to include in your blog post because these are the keywords that people are searching for in their query. Google shows these keywords to us is like a blessing for content writers. So you must utilize these keywords in your blog post in relevant places.
To rank higher on Google in 2021, you can’t ignore the importance of latent keywords in your article, it is highly recommended to include these keywords wherever required in your blog post.
Step 2: SEO Optimization To Rank Higher On Google In 2021
SEO is a very vast concept and I can ensure you that you don’t need to know everything about it, you just need to know the right information, there is so much going on, on SEO on the internet to make it look so hard as possible but in reality, it is simple if you know the right information and you execute it properly.
SEO is a piece of cake for those who have written unique content with an intention to provide value to the readers as I mentioned earlier at the starting of this blog post.
Use free SEO tool Seobility:
The above image represents the score of our blog post best digital agency WordPress themes 2021 which is ranking on the first page of Google. As you can see the score is 83 which is quite good.
Follow the steps mentioned below so you can also achieve an 80 plus score for your blog post:
- Go to Seobility and paste your blog post URL you want to rank on top.
- It will analyze your page and show you the details you need to improve in order to make your page worthy to rank on top.
- Work on solving all the errors step by step and improve your SEO score to the maximum.
- Don’t panic on technical errors, focus more on simple SEO errors and fix them properly.
- Make sure you achieve a 100% score for the “headings structure” of your page.
- The most important hack here is to paste your competitor page URL on Seobility and analyze their page and their SEO score.
- Make sure you are also equal to them or above them in terms of score.
- You can fix all the technical and SEO issues by yourself if you know how to do it or you can do it by hiring an expert who can fix it for you.
- When you analyze your competitor’s page which is ranking on the top page of Google, you will see they have more backlinks pointing to their page than yours.
- Don’t let this disappoint you, getting backlinks is the toughest part of SEO but it can be achieved if you have quality content. Step 3 mentioned below is all about backlinks.
Bonus Tip #2: Internal Linking
This is a very important bonus tip to rank higher on Google in 2021, Include internal links to your blog posts that are already ranking higher, make sure to include at least 3 to 5 internal links on your blog posts. Internal linking is a very important part of SEO, It also helps to rank and index other important pages of your website, so don’t just include any random internal link that will distract the reader from your site, links should be relevant to the content and the main title of the page. Use accurate anchor texts for your internal links.
Also Read: What Is The Average Blog Post Length?
Step 3: Off-Page SEO: Earning Backlinks Efficiently
So why backlinks are so important for your page: In simple words, your content must be appreciated by someone who is an expert in the niche you are in or it can be someone who has build very trustworthy goodwill on the internet
For example, I have written this content that you are reading and you consume a great amount of value from it (I’m assuming you are a high authority domain website with good monthly traffic) and you decided to link to me on your upcoming blog post about SEO optimization, it means I have got an organic backlink and my content is providing great value to the readers.
Google sees this as the most important ranking factor and it prefers and ranks those websites and pages on the first page that have at least more than one unique backlink from other websites.
How To Earn Backlinks Efficiently:
Before we start on earning backlinks please take a note that backlinks should be earned organically, if you are self putting links to your website and pages on directories, social bookmarking sites, and buying links in bulk then this activity can make your website heavily penalized by Google. These are actually called Black hat SEO techniques and Google hates it the most.
So focus on White Hat SEO and earn backlinks organically for your site.
There are three important ways to earn Backlinks organically:
- Outreach: By Outreaching you can earn a backlink to your website by simply asking the relevant website to link to you. You have to create a professional email and outreach to many prospects as possible. The important thing to note here is that you don’t need hundreds of backlinks, you must focus on getting at least one high authority domain backlink from a relevant website. One quality backlink can make a huge difference in the rankings of your blog posts, if you are able to get more than one quality backlink then you can definitely rank on top of Google for a very long period of time.
- Guest Blogging: Guest blogging is worth a try if you can write an excellent copy for a high domain website, you can then include your website page link on that blog and you will have a backlink. You can search the websites that accept Guest blogging by simply searching on Google.
- Social Media Promotion: Social media promotion is one of the most important ways to promote your blogs and generate high-quality backlinks. To implement this you must follow the pages and groups that are relevant to your niche and promote your blogs there. Apart from that, you can also start your own page, group, and community on social media platforms to connect to people and to make your website as popular as you can. The more active you are on Facebook, the higher the chances of getting on the top page of Google. You can also show your expertise by answering questions on Quora and other Question and Answer websites to build credibility and goodwill for your blog and website.
Important Outreaching tips to follow:
- For sending a mail to prospects you will need their email address, you can simply find it on the website’s contact page or their social media pages.
- In case you’re unable to find the email address anywhere, there is a tool called Hunter.io that can quickly provide you the email address of prospects.
- When crafting a mail make sure you are writing a mail to a human, not a bot. Make it as personalized as possible, use their name, write a short subject line and attractive content, don’t make it too short or too long.
- Take follow-ups after 3 days if you don’t see a response in your inbox.
- Send mail on Wednesday, as the highest response time for outreaching is shown on Wednesday.
Bonus Tip #3: Check The Backlinks Profile Of Your Competitor’s Blog Page
Ahrefs can make your task more easier and effective, all you have to do is go to “site explorer” paste your competitor URL which is ranking on the first page of Google and then click on Backlinks on the left menu.
You will see the top backlinks they have with the anchor text and domain authority of each website, now as you know your competitor’s backlink profile, you can now outreach to these websites by following the outreach method I have mentioned above and get yourself a backlink from one of these websites.
This is the most effective way to earn Backlinks so you can rank higher on Google in 2021 by understanding your competitor’s Backlink strategy.
Still Not Ranking On First Page?
Step 4: Time To Check Core Web Vitals and PageSpeed Insights Score
In case you are not familiar with core web vitals, Google introduced it earlier this year to make sure your website Performance, Accessibility, Responsiveness, and SEO are up to mark.
So what you have to do now is go to the web. dev/measure and check your website core web vitals score. If it is not showing green scores everywhere, you have to fix all the errors showing in the LightHouse report.
I have written a detailed blog post on core web vitals, you can check it out here How to measure core web vitals for your website and tips to improve it (step by step guide) and follow the steps to improve your core web vitals score.
For instance, your core web vitals score should look like this:
Once you have all the core web vitals issues fixed and your score is above 90 for all 4 elements mentioned above. No one can stop you from ranking on the first page of Google.
But hold on, make sure your PageSpeed insights score is above 90 as Google hates slow websites. Make sure your server is upgraded and you don’t have a huge amount of unused CSS and Javascript on your website. We recently fixed all the major issues of our website Brandexponents and achieved the full 100 scores.
If you have a website on WordPress, make sure to deactivate all the plugins that you don’t use because it can hurt your website speed the most.
Bonus Tip #4: Important Plugins To Install
Installing the WP Rocket plugin with Cloudflare can tremendously improve your website speed score. To know more about how we achieved 100 PageSpeed Insights score, check it out here, How To Increase the PageSpeed Insights score to 100 for your website.
Step 5: Make Sure Your Website Is Connected With Google Analytics And Google Search Console
Google Analytics and Google Search Console are the most important tools that are offered to us for free by Google. Whether you are just a blogger or an E-commerce website, everything about your website from its technical errors to target audience analysis can be tracked with these tools.
Wondering how to integrate Google Analytics to your website?, We got it covered too, watch this short video below to simply connect Google analytics to your website:
Conclusion: How To Rank Higher on Google
To rank higher on Google in 2022, Have patience and follow all the steps mentioned above, If you are committed to rank on the top page of Google then you have to work smart and be true to yourself and your website. Once you are ranked on the top page of Google, there is no going back to the 2nd page. Keep yourself updated with Google’s new algorithms and always do competitors analysis.
Keep updating your old blog posts with new keywords and content.
The secret to always staying on top in life or in the world of Google is to keep improving and updating yourself as much as possible.
I hope you like this article, share it with your friends and colleagues so they can also benefit from it. We would love to help you with all your SEO implementation and more to rank you on the top page of Google.
Get in touch with us at JustHyre