How do I get on the first page of Google?

Everyone wants their website to rank on the first page of Google. But the fact is that every website can’t rank first. Sites that conform to the rules and provide the sort of information that Google wants, excel. There’s no guarantee your site will reach the first page of Google, and no one can guarantee any kind of placement on the search engines. What Google looks for when ranking a site is a secret, but there are several factors we understand are crucial:

• Is your website mobile friendly?
• Does the site load quickly?
• Is the site secure (HTTPS)?
• How many times does a search phrase appear on the site?
• What’s the location of the individual searching?
• Is the content on the site relevant to the search query?
• Is the site active, and is it updated regularly?

Understand how search engines work

Content is the most important part of your website. High quality, relevant content is sure to drive visitors to your website. Accurate and engaging content will keep them there. Fresh content will bring visitors back. Blog posts and FAQ pages are a wonderful way to add content that your prospective customers are looking for.

Your homepage matters

It’s important to impress your visitors with a visually appealing design, but it’s equally important to attract the search engine bots. And they are attracted to content. So be sure to maintain a good balance between design and text. Your homepage must contain text that provides in-depth information about who you are, the products or services you offer, and why a visitor should choose you instead of your competitors.

Optimise your website proactively

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is all about improving the visibility of your website in the organic results of a search engine. In addition to placing high quality, unique and relevant content on your website, be sure to format the content in a manner that Google understands.

Here are some do’s and don’ts for optimising your website, assisting with getting on the first page of Google.

Do’s for search engine rankings

Unique content. One of the biggest factors for search engine rankings is unique content. Any pages or articles you put on your website must not be copied from somewhere else. Search engines will know if you’ve simply copy and pasted content from another website, and will actually penalise you for this.

Write content for the user. You need to make sure you write your content for human beings first and then worry about search engines second, if at all. If the content doesn’t benefit the user, they’ll click away, which will hurt your rankings.

Add new content all the time. Search engines love new and current content on your website, so having a blog and regularly writing engaging articles on popular topics related to your industry will help significantly.

Engage in social media. Use social media to promote articles of interest. Allowing users to click through to your content, like it, and share it with friends creates a kind of crowd validation, and shows search engines that real people are finding your content interesting and useful.

Have relevant page titles and page descriptions. Page titles are the snippet of text that appears at the top of the web browser for each page on your website, while the description is a short sentence that appears in the code and on search engine listings. Keep these short and relevant to what’s on the page.

Use page headings where appropriate. Headings are used to structure content, so a Heading 1 would be the main title of the page, a Heading 2 a sub-section, and so on. This helps search engines determine what’s most important on the page.

Have a fast loading website. You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to check this. Generally, avoid a lot of large, unoptimised images or heaps of unnecessary scripting.

Use keywords in page URLs. This matters less than it used to, but a clean, descriptive URL rather than a string of numbers or parameters still helps both users and search engines understand what a page is about.

Quality links from other websites. Backlinks need to be organic, meaning they appear only in places that are logical for a user to click on, not stuffed into the footer of every page, and on websites that are popular and have a good reputation.

Have an XML sitemap. A sitemap is a good tool to have on your website so search engines can quickly and easily find all of your pages and any content you’ve updated.

Don’ts for search engine rankings

Thin content. Don’t have pages or articles with only a few lines of text. There’s not much for search engines to find, and users will likely bounce away quickly, which can hurt your rankings.

Keyword stuffing. Pages need to be written for users, so don’t overuse keywords within your pages or articles. Search engines will know you’re trying to deceive them.

Hidden keywords and content. Search engines know if you’re adding sections to your website that are intended for search rankings only and hidden from regular visitors.

Overuse of ads. Advertising can be lucrative, so if it’s making you money, don’t remove it. But having a lot of ads on a single page won’t help your search engine rankings.

Purchased spam links. Search engines, Google in particular, have cracked down on spammy, paid links. Backlinks may actually hurt your rankings if they come from untrusted sites, are stuffed with keywords, appear site-wide across every page, or come from sites in a completely unrelated industry.

Avoid content search engines can’t read. Search engines can struggle to read content that’s locked inside images or heavy scripting, so it’s best to avoid relying on these where you can. Images can have alt text applied to them, which helps search engines understand what the image is about.

Pages with similar content. Search engines love genuinely different pages on your website, but don’t try to cheat the system with pages that have the same text with only a few keywords changed here or there.

Why might your competitors be outranking you?

If you’re unable to see results even after several months of work, and your competitors are ahead of you on the first page of Google consistently, it could be time to revise your SEO strategy. Here are some possible reasons why.

They’re presenting their business in a unique way. Your competitors could be projecting their products or services to a newly defined audience you haven’t discovered yet, or targeting different geographic locations. Either way, they’re in a space you haven’t found yet, which shifts online visibility in their favour.

They’re going local. Optimising a website for local search results increases visibility for local searches. The amount of local traffic could be lower than that from larger-scale targeting, but it’s highly relevant traffic, and it’s keeping your competitors on top.

They have a powerful inbound link profile. This usually means a lot of high-quality links pointing to their website, from diverse sources rather than a single one, from sites related to their products or services, from trustworthy sites, with no spam links in the mix, and with well-optimised anchor text.

They’re revising their content strategy constantly. Your competitors are producing quality content, not once, but constantly, revising their approach to enhance the user experience. Their content strategy includes different formats: short web copy, lengthy articles, infographics, and video, each well-optimised for well-researched keywords. Most importantly, they’re developing content for their users first, and search engines second.

They’re building influencer connections. Influencers bring visibility to content and brand, which flows through to greater visibility for a website. Search for influencers in your industry and establish genuine relationships with them.

How to check where you actually stand

Want to know if you’ve made it onto the first page of Google? Go to Google, type in the keyword you want to rank for, and search. If you’re signed into Google, select ‘hide private results’ in the settings to get more accurate results. If your website appears on the first page of Google, your SEO strategy is working well. If not, it needs some work.

A couple of things that help fine-tune this process:

Define a set of keywords for each page on your site. Optimising each page for a single keyword is a start, but it’s better to optimise for a small set of related keywords. This doesn’t mean stuffing them all onto one page, which is highly SEO-unfriendly. Use your main keyword as the primary keyword, and related terms as secondary keywords.

Think about readers, not search engines. When content is reader-friendly, it will automatically be more search engine-friendly too, because search engines are largely focused on surfacing content that’s genuinely useful to readers, what is most relevant will appear on the first page of Google. Focus your content on topics of real interest, whatever formats suit the subject best, and use keywords naturally rather than stuffing them in, saving that emphasis for your heading tags instead.

Use your title tag well. The title tag is the clickable text on search engine result pages. A well-written, well-optimised title tag increases your chances of a click. Use your primary keyword, and give enough additional information that users know what the page is about. Keep the length to around 55-60 characters.

Optimise your meta description. This is the text that appears below the clickable link on search results. It doesn’t have a major direct impact on rankings, but a well-written description increases your chances of a click, and therefore your traffic.

In conclusion

Implementing all of this well takes SEO expertise, constant competitor analysis, and regular monitoring of results. It’s an ongoing process, not a one-off fix, but sites that keep at it consistently are the ones that reach the first page of Google and stay there. Digital Developments can help you build a result-yielding SEO strategy. Get in touch today.