All right, so you want to get your website to the top of Google, which makes a huge amount of sense because Google traffic is incredibly well qualified.
Imagine that there are people out there searching for exactly what you do and looking to buy the thing that you offer.
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There's no surprise, that getting traffic from Google is still such a big priority for businesses. No matter what goes on with digital marketing, no matter what happens with social media, no matter what happens with email and crazy different ad tech. Getting to the top of Google for many businesses is still their number one digital marketing priority because the traffic is so awesome.
So in this article, we're going to share the strategies that give you an overview of how to get your website to the top of Google today, and how Google actually works. If we can get into Google's mind, then we've got exactly what you need to do to get that ranking.
Get Your Website To The Top Of Google
So first thing, Google crawls websites and it's really looking to show the sites which are the best answer to the searches problems. Now this best comes with a bit of an asterisk because what is the best answer to a search's problem?
Well, the truth is the best changes, the best answer for someone looking for a quick piece of information is very different from the best answer for someone who's looking for an in-depth well-researched piece of content.
So the first thing to understand is the user intent of the particular term that you're trying to rank for. Basically, we want to create the content that best satisfies the searcher. In fact, while we're on definitions. Let's define how Google really works and understand the business model cause actually that gives us even more context.
How Google Works
So Google makes about $40 billion a year because you click on ads. Yes, when you click on those ads, Google makes the money that pays for all of the random, stupid stuff that they come up with.
So Google needs to keep you hooked on its search engines to keep you clicking on those ads. Now, in order to keep you hooked on the search engine, it needs to give you the answers to your questions very, very quickly. And a question could be, a question, or it could be just someone typing in a phrase.
It needs to give you the responses that are most useful to you as soon as possible, otherwise, you're going to go somewhere else. So that's what Google cares about the best. Not because Google has some deep purpose like organizing the world's information. It cares because it needs to keep you hooked using its search engine, so it can monetize your suite clicks.
User Intent: Concept for SEO
Now I wanna talk a little bit about user intent in more detail because this is a really fundamental concept for SEO. if somebody types in "red shoes free delivery," the intent there is typically to buy something, okay?
Over time Google is going to understand this, and it's gonna be showing pages where there is a commercial outcome on that page or you can buy a product from that page.
If someone searches for, "how to clean red shoes?" That is an informational search. So that's gonna bring up a completely different set of search results, mostly focused around longer-form content that is going to be information-rich, because that's what the searcher is searching for.
It's really important whenever you're trying to rank your website or a particular page for a term to check what Google thinks the intent of that search is. So is it showing really informational pages in the search results? If Google is showing really informational pages on the search results, you know that in order to rank for that time, you have to produce something which is informational.
If on the other hand it is showing really commercial pages for that term or you can buy, or you can become a lead, then that's what you need to do.
So it's important not to try and fight Google, but try and identify what it's already doing and then put yourself in alignment with that.
Okay, so obviously to get a website ranked or a web page ranked, we need to give Google exactly what it needs to do, if we play the game, we get the results, so this also means that Google doesn't have rules like every page that ranks on Google needs to have 2000 words, it's much more sophisticated than that.
Like we said, if someone's searching for something which can be answered very quickly, then the best answer might be something that is very quick. If someone's looking for something much more in-depth. The best answers are going to be longer, so it's all context-dependent.
The approaches that we take on pages with different user intent are completely different but they always need to match the user's intent. All right, great, so loads of concepts, no answers yet. Okay, okay, all right,
How To Rank Your Website Pages On Google
Let's talk about how to rank these pages then. First, understand that it's not just your homepage that ranks, this is really important. Every single page on your website can rank, and in fact, for many websites, actually it's the homepage that shouldn't be ranking for the majority of its keywords.
Remember that Google wants to serve the best answer to its visitors, and quite often your homepage is just basically an introduction to your business or an introduction to your website.
Actually, the deeper more useful information is on your sub-pages, so whether these are service pages. If you're a service or lead generation business or whether they're product or category pages, if you're an e-commerce business.
So the first thing to do is to get away from thinking about getting your website ranking. Start thinking about your web page ranking.
This is good news by adding lots of well-optimized pages to your site. Not only do you increase the chances that you're ranked for those relevant terms. Also, you increase the number of relevant terms that you can rank for.
Things To Think About To Rank
There are basically four things that you need to think about,
1. Relevance
firstly relevance. You're never gonna see a page ranking on Google that isn't relevant for the term that you've searched for. So if you're trying to rank content on your site for things that you're not actually relevant for, you're not actually offering, it's gonna be a bit of an issue.
2. Popularity
The second thing, is popular, if you're not being talked about if you don't have that credibility of being mentioned in other places on the internet, why should Google take a punt and trust you as being the best solution?
3. Authority
The third thing is authority, how well regarded are you in the space that you're in.
This is more important in certain niches than others, but your authority is becoming an increasingly important part of why Google is gonna justify ranking your pages.
4. Quality
And then the final thing quality, if the information on your site isn't great, if it's not fact-checked, if it's full of mistakes and errors if your site takes a long time to load, it's not mobile-friendly, it's full of broken links, this is not a good sign.
By far the single biggest SEO hack if you like, and it's not even a hack, where did all the SEO hugs go? What was happening to our industry?
It's to create more great content on your website. This is such a boring thing to be told, I know,
you're reading this article because you want the hacks. You wanna know where which keywords to put in your page title and what the keyword density of your first paragraph should be. And all this type of stuff. I know here, I am just saying, more content. I know it's really boring, but it's also really true.
It's also really difficult to do, okay? Creating lots of really good quality information on your site is a difficult thing, it's a time-consuming thing, and it might cost you quite a lot of money and time to do.
So in our experience just because you know that it's a good thing to do, doesn't mean people are necessarily doing it. So how do you actually go about this process?
Types or Categories of Keywords
1. Commercial Keywords
So the first thing to do whenever you're planning to write more content is to brainstorm your keywords. Now you've got a few different types of keywords
that you might want to write content for. The first type of keyword is keywords that would relate to your product or service.
Let's say that you're an accountant, you have tax accountancy, so you're going to have phrases that might be searched for, by someone who's looking for a tax accountant, for example, tax accountant, tax accountancy, a tax accountant for small businesses, tax accounts for enterprise, you know, whatever it might be.
So you're going to have keywords that relate to the thing that you do, or the subset of the thing that you do, okay? These are gonna be very commercial keywords. These are gonna be the keywords that you're gonna be optimizing your core service pages, your product pages for.
2. Problem-Based Keywords
Then you've got another category of keywords that relate to the problem that your audience has. A problem in the tax accountant example might be something like how to reduce corporation tax or how to save on company VAT, or how to plan for VAT bills or something like this.
So that person has a problem that you can solve, but they're not necessarily looking for the thing that you're offering, yet, okay? So these people are further up the funnel, they're not yet ready to buy from you, maybe, but they're the sorts of people that you want on your website because they would make good potential customers.
3. Potential Customers Related Keywords
The third type of keyword is even further up the funnel, so this is anything that's searched by people that might indicate that they're a good potential customer for you. So this could be if let's say we're a tax accountant this might be things like how to scale a small business.
Well, an accountant is gonna be an important component of that, but that person isn't searching for an accountant, in fact, they're not even searching for a problem
that indicates they need an accountant, they're searching for something bigger.
So we've got these three different levels of the keyword if you like, we've got commercial, which are the ones that are kind of I need this thing, then we've got the problem-based. So, I probably need this thing, but I don't know it yet. And then we've got the really informational stuff which is really top of the funnel and really broad.
Key Pages On Your Site
- Core pages
- Blog posts
- Knowledge base/ Ultimate guides
Now we might want to write content for each of these three different types. Because we're going to have core pages on our website that target the commercial terms, and tax accountants.
We're going to have blog posts that might target the problems. For example, how to save money on VAT bills. Or how to save corporations hacks, or when you should be paying your tax.
And then we might have a knowledge base on our site. This would be like the ultimate guide to small business growth. Which is designed to get us loads of business owners onto the site. So that we can sign them up for email things and pitch them on accountancy further on down the line.
So once we understand that we've got these different types of customers. We can see how we might actually want different types of content on our website. And in fact, we're going to need different types of content on our website.
Google is gonna be looking to show different types of pages for each of those different searches. So the first thing we do is collect all of these ideas and put them in a spreadsheet.
Now, usually, you wanna prioritize your commercial keywords because those are the ones that most rapidly gonna turn into money. If you had to get any one of those individual customers onto your site, obviously you would choose the person who's searching for a tax accountant.
So they are going to be your top priorities. Your other types of keywords are going to be really useful for building up the visibility of the site. Also, building up your credibility, and picking up links as well. Which is going to help your authority. Also building up your topical expertise to help your ranking for those core commercial keywords, comprehend? So you've got what we call the key pages on your site,
If you're a service company or e-commerce business, these are your core pages. And these are the ones that you're going to optimize for your target keyword.
So for example, using your target keywords in your page title. Use your target keywords in your headings on those pages. Make sure they've got a good amount of information on each page using those target keywords and related terms. Then you're going to create content for the keywords that target customer problems.
So this might be writing long in-depth blog posts. It might be building out a knowledge base. Then you might want to optimize previous content that you've written for these phrases if the targeting wasn't that clear.
Optimizing Content For Google's Search Results Format
1. Showing Featured Snippets
Now, once you've created this content, the next thing you wanna do is optimize your content. Optimize for how Google is showing the information in the search results. Now you'll have noticed showing featured snippets.
These are like the bit of text that you see in the search results. And for a whole bunch of different informational terms.
Sometimes, if you search for the best website design you're probably gonna get an unordered list. It has just been lifted from someone's website and put directly in the search results. So that Google can show that information to the search or without them actually having to go on the website.
Now, if you're playing this game, if you're competing for search results. Where there's a featured snippet shown it's a good idea to try.
Now people get confused about featured snippets and think well, I don't really wanna get a featured snippet on Google. Because then Google's just gonna take the information from my site and show it in the search results. So no one's gonna come onto my site over the contract. Actually, you'll notice your click-through rate increasing from search results.
If you've got featured snippets people can see that the information is good. And they will want to read more detail about it as well.
2. Optimizing Your Metadata
Now, the metadata on each page of your site guides what Google shows in the search results. When you search for something on Google. You see the blue links, and then you see the black text.
Underneath the blue links are usually your page title. So this is a piece of matter that you set behind the scenes on your site. Basically gives every single page on your site, a title.
This is also the thing that shows up in the tabs in your browser. Good idea to use your target keywords in your page title, particularly at the start. Then, when someone has searched for that term. They're going to see your title being that phrase that they've just searched for.
If I've just typed in something that my brain is tuned to, I'm most likely to click on the thing. Also, ones who write a compelling meta-description.
So meta-description is the black description text that Google shows in the search results.
Check out my article about Tips To Make Compelling Meta-Description.
Getting Other Websites To Link To Your Website
Whether it's gonna go away or not in the future, nobody knows, but right now links are making a difference. So what's the deal with things.
Basically, you need to get other websites to link to your website. This will show Google that you're an authority in your area. It's basically a popularity contest. How do you know who's popular?
It's because you look at how many people are talking about each other. You figure out who's talking about this person the most.
The most popular sites have the most authority in Google's eyes and tend to get the best ranking. So you need to play this game as well.
Also, check out my article about the best ways you can get links to your website.
Conclusion: How To Get Your Website To The Top Of Google
So those are the main ways to get to the top of Google. Firstly, understand how Google works and make sure you're playing Google's game. My number one tip above anything else is to get a web page ranked at the top of Google. Make sure that the page deserves to rank.
Second thing, make sure you know the phrases that your customers are searching for. Things that they're going to be searching for if they're looking to do business with you.
And also just general things that they might be searching for if they are your source of customers.
Once you know those keywords, write or optimize the content on pages for those types of keywords. And make sure that you're matching the intent of the keyword to the intent of the page.
then you're going to go out and pick up some links.
We discussed a few different ways of picking uplinks in my other post. Including creating linkable content and also doing outreach to publications and journalists.
So I hope you found that useful and I hope you've learned at least something.
Read more articles about websites here at BuildSite.
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