Do you want to be on Google's first page? It's not as difficult as you might imagine if you understand what SEO is and understand a few SEO fundamentals.
Google, like everything else in life, offers no promises. However, we have compiled a few easy solutions to address the most frequent difficulties that may be preventing you from receiving organic visitors.
If you're stuck on page two and don't know why, take a close look at the list below. Want to delve deeper? Read through our SEO checklist for a more in-depth examination of technical concerns.
As always, conduct a competitive analysis to observe how the rest of the results for the search queries you want to rank for appear.
Don't write 5,000 words of useless fluff if Google prefers a quick answer or a specific piece of content. If, on the other hand, Google returns a detailed answer, now is the time to go all in.
Great content ideas do not come to fruition in a single day; they require hours and hours of investigation and rigorous polishing, regardless of length. It should also be evaluated and modified as needed.
Write in-depth treatment of a topic that addresses your core query as well as relevant/related queries/questions for the audience. Take a step back and consider what you would want to see if you typed in that search term.
Always prioritise quality above quantity. Concentrate your efforts on high-quality material rather to low-quality information, as lower bounce rates and longer dwell times tend to correlate with higher rankings. Just because you have 2,500 words of original content on your page doesn't guarantee it's fantastic material. I'll say it as clearly as I can: word count does not equal quality.
2 Create a Diverse and Authority Backlink Profile
Investigate and scrutinise the backlink profiles of the top 10-20 results for your desired query or queries. Take note of the amount of links, the sorts of links, the page authority ranges, anchor text ratios (precise, broad, other), and whether or not the placements may be reverse engineered.
Backlinks remain a strong ranking indication in Google's algorithm, particularly at the individual page level. Quality over number is also the name of the game here, so focus on attracting editorially earned backlinks from a broad group of unique, credible websites.
Building high-quality backlinks has gotten increasingly challenging in 2017, but without them, ranking on page one in a competitive vertical is nearly impossible unless you rely solely on overall domain authority. But not everyone can be Amazon.
3. Improve the Architecture of Your Website
If you want a specific page to rank, it must be included in your cornerstone content. An orphaned page, or one that is difficult to find on your website, will not suffice.
Include your target page in primary navigation menus where applicable, and develop a comprehensive and well-thought-out internal linking strategy. Both tactics will allow the most authority to flow to your page, resulting in it being crawled more frequently.
- https://www.mysite.com/products/product-1/?p=2837 is a poor example.
- https://www.mysite.com/mens-clothing/sweatpants/joggers/ is a good example.
As a general guideline, you should be able to get to a page with three clicks or less. Clean, keyword-focused permalinks are your buddy for a nice user experience and strong search signals. If you decide to update or alter a URL, make sure to 301 the old to the new in order to maintain authority.
4. Improve Your Target Pages
Check that your heading tags, titles, and alt image tags are appropriately optimised. Over-optimization, on the other hand, should be avoided. Learn about the appropriate keyword density for SEO in our post. But there's a lot more to learn, so we dedicated an entire post to content optimization.
After making changes, submit your URL to Google via Search Console to ensure that search engines crawl the most recent version.
A excellent place to start with on-page optimization is to look at the first page of Google for your search query. What is Google's preference among those results? Look for patterns that you can imitate and see how you might improve on them.
5. Include Trustworthy Outbound Links
From your article, include links to additional related sites. You will provide users with more information to investigate so that they will not return to the search engine results (SERP). You should also give credit where credit is due.
Cite industry experts, back up assertions and figures, and express relevance to search engines through effective outbound linking. However, do not use the nofollow tag on paid or sponsored links, as well as websites that you do not trust. Failure to do so may result in an unnatural outbound link penalty.
6. Mobile and Page Speed Optimization
You must have a mobile-friendly website now that Google's mobile first index is active. If your website isn't responsive, forget about it – you'll fall behind and continue to lose visibility.
Google's John Mueller recommended webmasters with m.site.com mobile subdomains to move before the index goes live.
When you visit a website, you expect it to load quickly, provide up-to-date answers to your questions, and have material that is simple to read, navigate, and absorb. Major websites are already transitioning to Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP, which is proven beneficial for key website metrics and conversions as mobile search grows quickly.
Think with Google to see how fast your website is on mobile.
More Google PageSpeed Insights can be found here.
7. Increase Brand Awareness
Is your company's name, product, or service well-known? Create some immediate buzz to raise engagement metrics and possibly increase purchases, social shares, and connections.
Launch an influencer marketing campaign or mix Pay Per Click (PPC) with SEO to increase exposure of your page across several channels. Once you're on Google's first page, PPC will provide you more first-page real estate by essentially capturing two positions.
Another excellent approach is to launch a paid Facebook campaign. This will expose your page to a highly targeted group of people who, if properly targeted, should be interested in your product or service.
Conclusion
When you're stuck on page two, it might be really annoying. If your on-page SEO approach is solid, it's important to examine your backlink profile and close any gaps that exist between you and your search competition.
Remember that quality and consistency win the race; don't take short cuts that will harm you in the long run in the pursuit of quick results.
Continue to raise awareness and engage your target audience. Check rankings once a week or once a month, rather than daily, to get a more accurate long-term trend picture. Celebrate your minor victories along the road, and keep striving for that desired first page.