How to get your Website to Rank Higher on Google

Well, hello there, my SEO friend. Today I want to talk about a very important topic that’s a focus for most small business owners. How to get your website to rank higher on Google. You likely have heard that it’s important to be at the top of Google search to get traffic, and that’s 100% true. If you want free, organic traffic from Google, you need to rank in positions 1-3 ideally. If you want to be found by the right people on Google, follow this process to help your site rank higher so you'll get more traffic. 

How do you get your website to rank higher on Google for specific keywords?

So it’s hard to know who will rank in position #1 for a keyword search, but we can generally have a good idea. Google wants to give the best user experience to someone searching for information. Because of this, Google will generally show websites it trusts over those it’s less familiar with in the search results. Google also favors websites from trustworthy sources and authorities that showcase experience or expertise in a particular area. They don’t want to show a website from a cooking blogger for a query related to tax preparation. Depending on the specific query, they want an accountant or tax preparation software company to answer your tax-related question. The cooking blogger may have a trustworthy website and be a respected authority in their niche. Still, if they’re not an expert in the niche the query is related to; then Google doesn’t want to show them because it’s not as good of a user experience for the searcher. 

With this in mind, you want to choose keywords that you can use to create and optimize content where you are an expert and authority in the niche. You want to focus on creating content that helps your ideal customer and provides value. You want to be able to bring something new to the discussion. This is important. Google’s latest algorithm update is the Helpful Content algorithm, which focuses on ensuring your content is helpful to the reader. No one wants to waste time reading a blog post or watching a video that doesn’t tell them anything new. They want to learn and get answers to their questions.

How do you get your website to rank higher on Google? 

You need to take specific steps to get your website to rank high in Google's search results.  First, choose one keyword for each page or blog post. Ensure that the keyword is one you can rank high on Google for. You’ll want to check out the competition on Google and see how you relate to them. Is your website or business similar to the ones ranking on page 1, or are they much bigger than you? If they’re similar, you’re probably on a good track, but if they’re much more prominent brands, you need to look for a different keyword because it’s less likely that you’ll be able to outrank them and get to the top of the search results.

You need to look at the content and optimization on the pages ranking at the top of the search results for this keyword. See if the content is good, is it helpful, and does it provide value to the reader? Is the content optimized properly for Google? If the content is either not great or not optimized well, this is good news for you because it may be easier for you to rank higher in the future. However, if the content is excellent, helpful, and optimized correctly, it will be a bit more challenging, and you need to focus on creating something better. It doesn’t mean you have to write a longer blog post, but you need to create better content than they have right now because what Google has and is showing is good, and if you want to beat it, yours needs to be better.

Look at the content objectively. What’s good about it? Is there anything you think is missing? If you’re not sure if there’s anything more to add, you can always copy/paste it into ChatGPT or another AI tool and ask it what else you could include or if there’s additional semantically related content you should include. Now, huge note here – never copy what your competition has written, and try to use it as your own. Ask ChatGPT to give you an outline for a blog post using that piece as a guide and tell you what else you should include to rank higher than that particular piece.

Create your content with your ideal customer in mind. Provide value, be helpful, give them the necessary information, and anticipate their questions. All of this will help you to rank higher, and then when your content is excellent, you’ll want to optimize it for the search engine.

Listen to the podcast here.

How do you optimize your content for Google?

Now, you will use the keyword you researched in each place that Google will look for information on your blog post or website page. Your content should include this keyword because it should be what it’s about.

You’ll want to also use the keyword in your:

• Title Tag
• Meta Description
• URL
• Image File Name
• Image ALT Text
• Copy
• Header Tags

Take my free SEO class today and learn how to get started with SEO so you can rank at the top of Google.

Getting to the top of Google search doesn’t happen by accident. It takes time and effort, but it’s worth it because consumers trust the search results more than ads, and the click-through rate is 10X that of ads. Getting to the top of Google Search means that your business gets found by the right people when they’re searching online.

You must work with Google and earn their trust to get those top positions. It’s not impossible, but it does take time and effort. Regularly creating content that’s helpful to your ideal customer and optimized for Google will make a big difference in your results.

The more content you create and optimize, the more traffic you should get from Google in time as long as you choose keywords you can rank for, your ideal customer searches for, and you optimize for following Google’s rules. If you’re ready to learn more, join me in Simple SEO Content, and I’ll show you how to do this and more. Get started today by taking my free SEO class. 

Podcast Episode Transcript 

Hi there, welcome back to the Simple SEO Content Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Lindetigen, and I'm so glad to have you here with me. Today. We're going to talk about one of the questions I always get: how exactly do I get to position number one in Google anyway, Rachel? So, if you've been around here for a while, you're learning SEO. You understand the importance of being in position number one. As you know, the higher you rank on Google, the more traffic you're going to get to your website and the more free, organic traffic you. Free traffic is really important because it helps you make more money in your business because you do not have to pay for Google, Facebook, or another social media channel to send the traffic to you. You're earning traffic by doing your SEO. So, how do we get to position number one anyway? It's actually a pretty simple process.

The most important thing here is to make sure that you're choosing a keyword that your website has a really good chance of ranking on page one high at the top if you want to get to position number one. So before you do any work on your page, create a blog post, or write anything, I want you to really hone in on finding the right keyword. Now, once you think you've found the right keyword, you're pretty sure it's the one that you want to use. I want you to go to Google and I want you to use an incognito browser window. This means your personal search results are not going to impact what you see in Google search results, because Google does personalize search results based on our previous history. So your results in a traditional Google window are going to be different generally than an incognito window. So go to Google, open an incognito browser window, type in the keyword that you're thinking about using, that you want to optimize for, and I want you to look at page one or the first 10 listings.

Google kind of changes the search results page sometimes. So right now, we've got generative search experience at the top. That's the AI area. I want you to look at what three sites usually three sites what three sites are pulling from for the generative AI section. If it happens to be there, then I want you to look and go through until you get down to, like, take a look at the people.

Also asked take a look at the related searches. Like, go down through that section. Probably after related searches, right now we're seeing the next set of search results so that would actually be our normal, traditional page to 11 through 20. Those are currently showing up on that infinite scroll, that super long page. But I want you to look at what's between generative AI at the top to the related searches at the bottom. Count out a maximum of 10 listings.

How similar are you to them? So are these websites that are very, very similar to you? They're local to you. They're small businesses. They're brands you've heard of. They're brands you've interacted with. They're your competitors. Maybe you're even there.

If so, you're probably on a really good track, and you probably are headed in the right direction, this keyword is very likely going to be a good one for you. However, if you're looking here and all you see are big national brands or maybe big local brands but they're really big compared to you. They're probably very authoritative in Google's eyes. They're ones where, if they had a store, it would be at the mall, and the main mall, or it would be at all the malls. And, my friend, this is not going to be a good keyword for you because it's too competitive. You're not going to outrank these big national brands, these big, super competitive websites, et cetera. You're not going to outrank them because, in Google's eyes, you're not as authoritative as they are on this particular subject, so it's very unlikely that you will be able to outrank them. And it's really important that we're able to rank on page one because 99.7% of all searchers do not go to page two, which means you've got to be on page one to get traffic from search. Okay, so that's the very first thing. We've got to be able to be on page one. We've got to make sure that these are keywords that we can rank for.

If you're seeing ones that are super competitive and you're like, okay, you're probably right, rachel, I'm probably not going to be able to rank for this, then I want you to go back to the drawing board and look for an alternative keyword. Go back to your keyword research tool. If you're using one, or if you haven't used one yet, now's the time to take your keyword and put it in as a seed term. So put it in as one of the ones you're considering and see what other results Google gives you, what other suggestions they have, and go through the process again. What you're looking for is the least competitive keyword with search volume. So higher volume is great. Lower competition is more important. So the most important is how competitive and how much search volume. So the lowest competition with the highest search volume of those lower competition keywords. You're likely going to find that the keywords that you're targeting have very low search volume, and that, my friend, is okay.

Search volume is not the most important thing when it comes to selecting your keywords for your optimization. Your website's ability to rank for the keyword is the most important thing because if you choose a keyword where Google determines you are not competitive enough for this, you are not going to show up on page one; you are not going to get traffic to it. You're going to end up back there on page five, page nine. Nobody, even your mom, is going to give up before she gets to page nine. The reality is you've got to be on page one. We want you to be as high as possible on page one because the vast majority of the clicks go to the listings that are in positions one, two, and three. So you're going to want to be as high as possible on page one. So, you're going to want to choose a keyword that has some search volume. Even if it's low, it's okay, even if it's low, because we're going to go about this and create lots of content. If we're only getting a few visits from each piece, we're still going to make money, we're still going to get traffic, we're still going to get those rankings. It's still going to work. It doesn't have to be a huge keyword to get results, my friend. So, we're going to choose that keyword.

Once you feel confident you have chosen the right keyword, then I want you to use that keyword in all of the places that Google is going to look for information as to what your site is about and what your page is about. Then, I want you to follow Google's rules. First and foremost, you can use a keyword a maximum of two times on your website. So you need to write this down on your master spreadsheet, and you need to keep track of it. You need to make sure that you don't use this other than like one other page because Google's only going to show you a maximum of two times, which means if you're using the same keyword on 10 pages, you're limiting yourself. You're limiting your potential reach to two pages instead of 10 pages with 10 different keywords. So choose your keyword Now.

You're going to use that keyword in your title tag. You're going to write a title tag that is a maximum of 60 characters, including spaces, that uses your keyword. Then you're going to write a meta description using your keyword maximum of 160 characters, including spaces. You're going to want to verify that these are correct, so you'll want to write them out. Go over to Word or Google Sheets, whatever you want and do a character count. So, highlight your text for your title tag or meta description. Do a character count and include spaces. Keep your title tag under 60 and your meta description under 160.

You're going to want to write your content using your keyword in your content. You are not going to write to a specific keyword density score. No, no, no. You may see things; you may see posts that'll tell you to write to this keyword density score and use your keyword this many times. Do not do that. Google does not want you to do that. Google wants you to write for your audience. You are naturally going to use your keyword because your blog post is about your keyword; it is tied to it, so you're going to be fine. No keyword density scores. No writing six times, none of that. That's how we get really crummy content, and Google does not want that. Google wants great, high-quality content.

Then, you're going to use your keyword in your header tags. Your header tags are the big font that separates the sections on your page. Google is going to look at those as another way of understanding what your page is about. You're going to use those in your sections and your subsections. So your page, by default, is generally an H1 tag, header one. That's the most important concept on the page. Your keyword needs to be in there. Then, from there, the H2 tag is like your section. So if you have, say, your blog post is three points, each of those three points is going to be an H2 tag. Then if you have sub-points in those, so, let's say point number one actually has three sub-points, the sub-points will be H3 tags. H4, 5 and 6 exist. You don't need to worry about them. One, two, and three are going to be the maximum that you're going to worry about. There's one H1 tag on each page. H2 and H3 can have multiple. So you're going to use your keyword there.

You're going to use your keyword in your image file name. That means the picture that you're putting on your page. Do not just upload it with the standard picture name. Don't do that. The image 678,. Don't do that. Go ahead and update it using your keyword and using the dash the one that looks like the minus sign in between each word, because Google reads those as a space. So Google will understand. Now, if you want a bonus, you can put your business name in there as well. So keyword dash, keyword dash, keyword dash, business name dash. Add multiple dashes. If your business name is like mine and it's multiple words, this will then allow your images to show up. When someone does a Google search for your business name, you'll allow it to look bigger, and your images will show up. So, like your blog post images, all of that will show up when someone searches for your business name. So it's another way to really own more of the real estate.

On the search engine results page, get my SEO content quick start guide. It's at the freebies tab on my website, etchedmarketing.com/freebies. It will walk you through exactly how to do all of this. It will give you a checklist on the very last page so you can make sure you've done what you need to do so that you can have the best chance possible of ranking in position number one on Google.

If you're not sure how to choose the right keyword in the beginning, take my free class. It's there, available on the freebies tab as well. Get started with that. It's going to walk you through. Start to teach you a little bit more about this, and then join me in Simple SEO Content where we can really do a deep dive on it, and you can truly learn everything that you need to to get results and to get you to page one consistently and on a regular basis. All right, thank you so much for being here. Let me know. If you have any questions. You can always DM me on Instagram @ etched marketing academy. I'll see you next week.