Your Guide To Ranking Higher On Google, Today

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has evolved into a field centered around well organized, relevant, and usable content. If you own a website, you’re probably aware of how vital it is to ensure that search engines approve of your content. Ranking on Google shouldn’t make you feel overwhelmed. Although improving your web presence is a gradual process, there are easy steps you can start today to boost your content on Google!

Steady Wins The Race

We want to start you off by grounding this point: Ranking on Google is a gradual process. Continuous improvement fueled by consistent and reliable content will guarantee that you come out on top of the game. Be wary of shortcuts and cheap methods that give you a short-term edge over other competitors. Although you may see results quickly, Google will (sooner or later) penalize you for using unapproved tactics in your web design. You may find your site quickly knocked back a page (or five) after reaching the top spot, or worse unindexed altogether.

Gradual Improvement Is Crucial

Google likes to see steady improvement in rankings. This can impact how your site is indexed and crawled. Keep in mind that it can take some time for Google bots to review your content. On average, pages that ranked within the top ten were over two years old. The average age of top-ranked sites was around three years.

Lower quality content and links are often ignored by Google bots. Nonetheless, we suggest not removing this content all at once as it can negatively impact your traffic. The main idea is to ensure that your content consistently improves moving forward.

Things That May Get Your Site Axed

Believe it or not, there are a lot of strict rules to abide by when it comes to ranking on Google. Shortcuts are tempting but they may ultimately do more harm than good in the long run. Things that could get you in trouble:

• Link Schemes
• Duplicate Content
• Sneaky Mobile Redirects
• Automatically Generated Content
• Keyword Stuffing

Check out Google’s Webmaster Guidelines for the full list of things to avoid.

Ranking Higher On Google

It may help to think of Google’s algorithms as people. SEO technology has evolved to a point where even the use of keywords is no longer as necessary in helping algorithms identify and index content. If your content is well organized, interesting, and usable to a person, it probably is to Google as well.

Have A Good Foundation

Basic things like website design, proper structure, and working links are paramount to your site’s success on Google. You want to make sure that your pages work from a technical standpoint. Effective usability is key to ensuring that you aren’t penalized for something unrelated to your content.

With that being said, a technical evaluation of your website’s health and performance is a critical step to making sure you rank higher on Google. Things to be aware of include the look and feel of your site, its usability, and how fast it performs.

Communicate To Google

Adding structured data throughout your site will help Google better identify what each page is about. Schema is the format that is most approved by Google.

In addition, unique, short and captivating header tags (H1, H2, H3) are bound to make your content more readable and identifiable by Google search algorithms. Research has shown that there is a positive correlation between ranking and the use of header tags throughout the content.

Prioritize Mobile Optimization

Smartphones have dramatically shifted the way we view and engage with online content. More people are using mobile devices to surf the web over desktops and laptops. Google has even acknowledged this by stating that they will prioritize mobile indexing over the indexing typically used for the desktop version of a page’s content.

In order to stay ahead of the game, you must optimize your site for mobile use. A web design consultation is a quick and easy step toward achieving an optimized site for Google.

Check out the SEO services we provide for more information on how to enhance your web presence. Also, gain access to a free local SEO report as you take your steps toward a better ranking on Google!