Tips to Help You Rise Up Google’s Search Engine Ranks

Topping Google’s search engine ranks is the ultimate dream for website owners. If you reach the first page, and even better the first position for relevant keyword searches, you will see many more visitors to your website than you would if your website only made the second page. So, hitting the top spot can be quite lucrative, but is it attainable?
If you’re a small business, it might not exactly be easy to get to the top of Google with your target keywords, but it certainly isn’t impossible either. You’ll have to put in a lot of hard work, and you may well have to spend a significant amount of money, but it is possible, and you and your business will reap the rewards.
To get you started, here are just some of the strategies you can use to reach the pole position on Google:
Ensure Your website is RankBrain Optimized
RankBrain is the name given to Google’s artificial intelligence machine-learning system. If you want to get better results for your website on Google, it is seriously important that you optimize your website to meet its requirements. RankBrain, which you can read more about at http://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-rankbrain, deals with unique and unspecific queries asked by its users in huge volumes each day, and this means that, if you can find unique queries and then create relevant content to answer these queries effectively, within your niche, you will very quickly start to gain more visibility and begin to push your way up the ranks. Obviously, this won’t be easy, but it certainly isn’t impossible to achieve either.
Write Long-Form Content
The times when you could get away with writing content just a paragraph long and expect to see decent results is long gone. If you want to do well on Google and other search engines, writing content that is at least 1100 words, but preferably 2000 words long or more, which really goes into depth on a subject is where it’s at. If your content is shorter than this, there is much less chance that it will end up on the first ten pages of Google, let alone the top of the first page!
Optimize for Local Searches
Many people who use Google do so to search for products, services and events located near them. As a result, it pays to optimize your content for local searches by focusing on keywords, and that mention your location. Doing this is as easy as using local SEO keywords to make your presence known. Things like creating and optimizing your company’s Google My Business page will really help with this. So, make sure you fill it in with details of your opening times, location and telephone number and make regular updates. If you do this, Google is likely to look more favourably upon you than other companies in your local area in the same niche who haven’t bothered to do this.
Use Natural Keywords
Because so many more people are using voice recognition technology to complete their Google searches, thanks to its greater speed and convenience, you will do a lot better in the search engine stakes if you use natural keywords – the kind of keywords that mimic the way people actually speak.
People using voice search tend to be a lot more direct that people who are typing and their language is often less formal, so bear this in mind before you start targeting a keyword and you should see some great results.
Answer Questions
It’s also a good idea to focus on creating content that answers the kind of questions people searching within your niche are likely to ask. Let’s face it, probably the majority of Google searches are being made to find the answers to questions, and if you can provide those answers to a sufficient standard of accuracy, then your content will automatically rise to the top. You see, Google wants to provide the best possible answers to its customers’ searches, so if you can get your website recognized as an authoritative source, you will rise up the ranks and get more traffic to your website.
Build Backlinks
Building backlinks might seem a bit old school compared to some of the other suggestions here, but it can still be a very effective way to boost your Google rank and consistently get your links on the first page. The key is to get your links posted on trusted, high-authority websites, rather than dodgy little sites set up just to host links and offer little of value.
Using SEO alerts, which you can find out more about at https://davidcarralon.com/seo-alerts, is a great way to do this because it enables you to find good authorities in your niche with just the use of Google alerts. You can then approach these authority sites about guest posting or mutual link building opportunities that will actually work for you.
Write Great URLs
URLs which are descriptive are much more likely to make it to the top than vague ones, so do the best to put the subject of your content in the URL.
Post Great News Stories
Getting your website included in Google News is an almost foolproof way to drive more traffic to your website, at least in the short term, and doing so is not actually all that difficult. Whatever niche you’re in, pay close attention to the goings on and as soon as something newsworthy happens, write a piece about it and publish it immediately, taking care to insure quality, and you stand a very good choice of getting to the top of Google News in relevant searches.
Optimize for Mobile Use
Because more and more people are using mobile devices to connect to the internet, it has never been more important that your website is fully optimized for mobile use. If your site is difficult to use on a cell phone or tablet, then Google will penalize you, and you will find it increasingly difficult to reach the top spot or even really come close.
Boost Your Website’s Speed
Nobody has time for a slow-loading website anymore, and Google certainly agrees, so if you want to rise up the ranks and reach that coveted top spot on the first page of the famous search engine, you really do need to do whatever you can to make your website as fast as possible.
First of all, use an online speed tool to work out how fast your website is and give you an overview of what you can do to speed the process up some. Then set to work on changing them. It might take some time for you to reduce page load, but it will help you to get where you want to be and increase the number of visitors to your website significantly. So, it really is worth the effort.
Give Your Twitter account More Attention
Twitter accounts used to have little to no bearing on Google search engine results, but that has all changes and Tweets are now indexed by search engines, which means, if you want to give yourself a boost and increase your presence at the top of Google, it’s worth spending some time improving your Twitter presence and employing some of the SEO techniques you use on your website there too. Even just tweeting more regularly will give you a boost and cold help you to direct more traffic to your website, so even if you have to hire a social media manager, get on top of it now!
Pay Your Way
Of course, if all of this sounds like too much hard work, you could always go down the road of paying to appear high up on Google using PPC ads. This will certainly help you to get more visibility for your website, but the thing is, it might not help you all that much in the long term, because you will still need to create high-quality content, sell well-rated products and do many of the other things on this list if you want to stay at the top, and actually many customers prefer using websites that are found organically, rather than those that are clearly adverts because they trust the quality more that way.
Keep at It
Even if you implement all of the above, you can’t ever think that’s enough. Even if you put the hard work in and manage to make it to the top, there is no guarantee you’ll stay there, and actually, unless you keep publishing high-quality content, refining your practices and checking out the latest search engine updates, there is absolutely no chance that your links will keep appearing on the first page.
If you don’t have the time to keep constantly updating your websites and social media pages, then it may well be worth hiring a Search Engine optimization specialist to take care of your company’s online presence for you. They are certainly the people best placed to get you to the top and keep you there.