How to Improve SEO on Google
Search engine optimization (SEO), is the set of practices designed to increase a website’s visibility on search engines like Google. While no one fully understands how search engines rank pages, certain factors have been shown to have more of an effect than others in influencing these rankings.
Your content that targets a specific keyword and provides useful answers is more likely to rank highly than one that just covers a similar topic but doesn’t address the user intent behind their query.
As well, having plenty of high-quality backlinks from other sites is also an indicator that your resource is valued and should rank higher in search engines.
However, in order for any page to rank highly on search engines like Google and Bing, multiple processes must take place and many of them fall outside of website owner control. First the page needs to be crawled or read by search engine robots; next it needs to be indexed; finally it needs to be ranked so it appears in relevant searches as a result.
There are various factors that could impede these three steps and the results that follow them. For example, content with too much duplicate or thin content could be penalised even if written better than more authoritative pages, since duplicate and thin content confuse search engines leading to lower rankings.
Website owners can also attempt to maintain the relevance of their pages by using keywords in title tags and image alt text, adding internal links, and employing semantic keywords. They should also ensure their pages are mobile-friendly with an effective site structure, possess an appropriate domain authority (i.e. a low DA will likely rank poorly), as well as having mobile-friendliness.
Other elements that could affect how well a page ranks include speed, the number of inbound and outbound links, their quality and more – these factors are known as offsite ranking factors and they lie beyond any website owner’s direct control.
Website owners can improve their technical SEO by making their site easy for search engines to index, ensuring unique content is used, optimizing for mobile and providing proper internal linking – as well as tracking their Google rankings using tools such as Semrush’s Position Tracking tool to see if their efforts are bearing fruit.
This article won’t give any magic solutions that will instantly push your page onto Google’s first page, but it should provide ideas on how to optimize and increase the chances of ranking well on search engines. Our SEO starter kit may provide additional help with understanding SEO basics – best wishes!
