Before we kick off this deep dive into mastering Search Engine Optimization, it's crucial to acknowledge the dynamic nature of recent SEO strategies shaping the landscape.
We're in an era where understanding the intent behind search queries— "semantic search"—is more vital than focusing solely on specific keywords. If you search for a celebrity in 2024, you will be provided a comprehensive structured view of the individual. Rather than flooding the first page results with websites containing keywords, you're provided a collection of relevant information.
Like any mountain, getting to the top of a Google Search page is possible. But it'll take some work.
"How can I get to the top of the Google search results fast, and stay there?!"
This seems to be the question every business owner or marketing director wants to know the answer to.
Yes, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of ranking signals that Google takes into consideration, along with constant updates to each algorithm, but the core elements of successful search engine optimization will almost always stay the same.
We get it though...
Search Engine Optimization is a daunting and somewhat mysterious topic for a lot of marketers. And although organizations are aware of how powerful SEO can be, most in-house marketing teams simply don't know where to begin.
That's why today our team at Trailblaze Marketing is going to walk you through exactly how to get your business to the top of Google, and look like a marketing hero doing it.
Here's exactly what we'll cover:
(Quick note: SEO has a lot of moving parts. If you find yourself struggling to figure out how each component works together, you might benefit from our website & SEO audit.)
The first position in Google's search results has a 31% click-through-rate.
Yep, you read that right. And the first step in getting there is making sure your website is clear of any obvious issues.
I'm not talking about about a super in-depth technical audit, but rather a check for any server or security issues, crawl and/or index restrictions, overall indexation, crawlability, crawl rate, site speed, penalties, HTML improvements, etc.
Essentially, we want your website to have a clean and solid foundation to build off of as we progress further into on-page SEO, link building, and more.
Here's exactly what to do:
1. Head over to Google Search Console:
This is a free, yet super powerful tool for SEO that every webmaster and digital marketer should have access to.
Your Search Console is comprised of 4 major sections:
In this section, we're going to mainly talk about crawl and index (and how to quickly get your site into shape).
First, check out what Google has to say under the Current Status. You should be looking for any response codes that aren't labeled as 200. Make sure everything is good with your server, redirect any 404's, and address any redirect chains (redirecting to a redirect).
Here's a brief overview of the HTTP status codes you may encounter:
Now, head over to where it says Google Index.
Here you'll see the number of pages Google is currently including in it's index. Cross reference this number with the pages included in your site map (more on that soon) and also be sure to check out blocked resources.
Here you'll see exactly what your robots.txt (the file that tells Google how to crawl your site) is communicating to Google. Ensure the pages being blocked should actually be blocked.
Next, head down to crawl. Make sure there are no known errors. You'll also want to confirm you've submitted an XML sitemap (this tells Google what pages it should consider when indexing).
The relationship between your robots.txt file and XML sitemap is very important. Make sure one is not contradicting the other.
Remember:
These two things are absolutely imperative in making sure your site can be crawled as efficiently as possible, and you're not wasting your precious crawl budget on low-quality, irrelevant pages (the amount of pages Google will crawl on average; more trusted and authoritative sites are crawled more).
2. Check out your site speed!
On average, 40% of your website visitors will bounce if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. That's scary, and a good reason for you to optimize your sites speed.
Use Google's PageSpeed Insights tool first. Although it may not be the industry preferred tool, it will give you a solid estimate of your page speed, in addition to a starting point.
Some things you should look for immediately:
Next, we recommend cross-referencing all of this in a tool like GTmetrix.
Here you'll see the exact improvements you should make, in addition to a waterfall illustrating how your page is currently utilizing system resources.
Your site speed is incredibly important nowadays so make sure to get it right!
If you're a WordPress user here are a few plugins that will save you a lot of time by addressing most of the issues above:
IMPORTANT: Every plugin will interact with your website theme differently. Make sure you back-up your site and check for any design or functionality issues after each plugin is activated.
Check out the Moz learning center here for more information on improving your site speed.
3. Internal Linking
Looking to quickly boost a page up in Google search? Look no further.
Internal linking is suuuper important for your sites navigation, information hierarchy, crawlability and the passing of your link equity (the influence or power a page has).
Links are considered the highway of the Internet.
When you link from one page to another, you're essentially giving it a vote of confidence (which Google notices). In addition, your making Google's job easier (which they also notice) by creating a structure that is easily crawlable for them.
So how do you leverage internal linking to get to the top of Google?
You internally link from authoritative pages (high link equity) with relevant anchor text (text describing the link) to pages you'd like to move up.
This is why creating a site architecture with link silos is so important. Regardless of where on your site an inbound link comes in, every page in that silo will be affected.
The trick to effective internal linking is to be as natural as possible. The more contextually relevant, the better.
Check out this article on best practices for internal linking.
4. Engagement
We can bring all the traffic in the world to your site, but if its not designed to convert or at least hold a prospects attention, your SEO efforts will be worthless.
In addition, Google's algorithms' are shifting and putting more weight on user experience signals like bounce rate, pages per session, time on site and more.
The solution?
Design pages that are valuable and shareable. This may sound overly simplistic, but it's not. As long as every page has a purpose and provides real value, Google will eventually take notice simply by the engagement, amplification, links, and more.
Here are some quick ways to increase the engagement on your pages:
Above all, images and video are one of the quickest ways to increase your levels of engagement. Be smart about your usage of media and Google will take notice.
5. Architecture
Mobile, mobile, mobile.
If you've read anything related to digital marketing, you've probably heard of mobile responsiveness and its importance.
The thing is...
It's not just important anymore... it's a necessity!
See, Google recently rolled out their mobile-first index. What's that mean for SEO?
They're now ONLY looking at the mobile version of your website! So the next question is... how do you optimize for mobile?
Mobile users behave a lot differently than desktop users, and require a much different experience as a result.
For an in-depth look at how you can optimize your site for mobile, check out this definitive guide by Brian Dean.
When we think about website architecture a few other important things here are your information hierarchy and URL structure.
Your hierarchy is simply the organization of your website. This is important for crawlability, user experience, and more. There's nothing worse than having to click through 4 pages to get to the single page you need.
Organize your site in a way that is logical, helpful, and simple. Your users will thank you.
The architecture of your site will affect your URL structure too. Believe it or not, shorter URLs rank better than longer ones.
Your site's architecture is a monster of a topic that can't possibly be covered in full by this one piece of content. For a great resource, check out this post at Search Engine Land.
Also, performing a comprehensive website and SEO audit is sometimes needed to fully uncover the issues holding your site back.
Before we get too into the weeds, let's take a step back to remember what variables we're trying to change. It helps to refer back to this list from time to time too, as it can be a quick source of motivation.
Cyrus Sheppard put together a comprehensive list of 100+ SEO success factors ranked by importance.
This post is, by far, the most relevant piece of content out there on this topic, and it's easy for just about anyone to comprehend.
Here's a preview of the top success factors:
1. Content that targets user search queries
2. Crawlable + accessible to search engines
3. Quality and quantity of links
4. Satisfies user intent
5. Uniqueness of content
A page with proper on-page SEO can work wonders for getting to the top of Google. And for those of you lucky enough to already have a website with high domain authority, your on-page should be flawless.
This is because your pre-existing authority means you'll have a much easier time trying to rank for a keywords.
(Clear correlation between domain authority and rank, according to Backlinko)
In any case, here's exactly what you need to pay attention to:
Check out this case study to see exactly how we leveraged on-page SEO for insane organic growth.
When it comes to your SEO strategy, content really is everything (notice how I didn't say king?).
In fact, according to Content Marketing Institute, content development costs 62% less than outbound marketing tactics AND generates 3x as many leads.
But remember: Quality is far more important than quantity. One long-form, super in-depth guide with 2000+ words carries a lot more value than 10 vague, 300-word posts that barely scrape the surface.
Comprehensive content like guides often rank for high purchase intent keywords too. Speaking of intent, you need to pay close attention to WHY a prospect has landed on your site. This is, by far, the most important part of developing amazing content.
Although your content creation will mainly be guided by your keyword research, you still need to ask yourself the following questions:
Addressing these core questions early on will ensure that your content is shared and linked to. Put your empathy cap on and start thinking like your prospect.
Check out the Free Beginners Guide to Content Marketing from Moz.
Building links is considered by many to be the most difficult part of search engine optimization. If you're new to SEO you may be wondering...
What's all this talk about link building about? What's the point?
Links are used by search engines to crawl the web. When crawling, Google will discover new web pages (that they may or may not include in their index) and then decide how well a particular page should rank (largely based on the number of links they just discovered pointing to that page).
A little history...
Links are what allowed Google to dominate as a search engine in the late 1990's. This led to the first algorithm (created by Google co-founder Larry Page) called PageRank. It measured the quality of a page based on the quantity of links pointing to it, and it worked extremely well. That is, until SEOs discovered how to manipulate it.
Fast forward to SEO in 2018, and links are still considered one of the most important ranking factors (if not the most important). The difference now?
Google looks at much more than just the quantity of links a page or website as a whole receives.
The velocity, diversity, anchor text, relevancy, page position, and of course quality of the links you're receiving all play a HUGE role now.
So how do you build a link acquisition strategy that checks off all of these boxes?
There are many tactics. The appropriate one for your organization largely depends on the resources you have available (content, budget, time, etc.) and the industry you're in.
A few common, and mostly successful link building tactics include:
For more help with link building check out this helpful resource over at Moz.
Our team hopes you found value in our beginners guide to ranking on the top of Google.
Our goal was to walk you through each aspect of SEO, in hopes of breaking this topic down into layman's terms.
Now that you have a solid overview of what SEO looks like, it's time to start pumping out content, building links, and learning as you go.
Effective SEO is consistent and slow.
That's right... it's slow...and it takes A LOT of patience.
Editor's Note: This blog post was originally posted in January 2018, but has since been updated for accuracy.