Boost Your Rankings: Expert Strategies from the Best SEO Resellers and Agencies

Intro

Picture this: 66.2% of the world’s population already have access to the internet, as per Statistica’s recent report. That’s 5.35 billion people in a world of about 8 billion people.

And get this — this figure is expected to grow by 47% by 2029, translating to about 7.9 billion people.

The implication? The internet is becoming the new goldmine for businesses. That means businesses without a strong online presence are destined for a dark tomorrow.

The solution? Search Engine Optimization (SEO). With proper SEO, you can boost your ranking on search engines, immensely increasing your odds of success amidst the heated competition.

This article curates professional insights on how to boost your rankings on search engines. Follow closely as we reveal expert strategies that you can use to beat your competitors for the much-coveted spots on the first page.

Understanding SEO

Before examining how SEO can help you improve your search engine ranking, let’s first look at what it is.

SEO is a set of techniques for making your business easily visible to internet users whenever they search for the product or services related to it.

The internet is currently teeming with content. Imagine hundreds of billions of web pages and over one billion websites!

That’s a lot, which is why you must find ways to ensure whatever you post online doesn’t join the alarming 96.55% of content that never gets website traffic from Google.

Source: Ahrefs

The surefire way to do that? Embracing SEO. Search engine optimization helps you tailor your website to make it score as highly as possible when assessed against the ranking criteria used by search engines.

The higher your content scores against search engines’ ranking criteria, the higher it appears on search engine page results (SERPs), and the more it will attract organic traffic to your website.

Monster Insights reports that the first result on Google search engine result pages (SERPs) scoops a significant 28% of all traffic, as the first 5 results account for a staggering 70% of all traffic as seen below.

Source: Monster Insights

In other words, if you want the most traffic, you should target the top spots or at least somewhere on the first page of Google or any other search engine.

Expert Strategies for Boosting Your Google Ranking

We’ve covered the basics. Now, let's address the big question: How can you boost your search ranking?

Here are essential SEO aspects that you can leverage to improve your online visibility.

1. Keyword Research and Optimization

Keywords are the backbone of On-page SEO. Therefore, to rank on search engines, properly conduct keyword research and optimization.

Keyword research involves finding out what terms your target audience is typing in their browser’s search box when looking for products and services that you offer.

Search engines prioritize relevance when addressing customer needs. So, they’ll only present searchers with what gives the best impression of relevancy to their search engines — and one way to create this impression is by using keywords properly.

In one of their publications, Google clearly stated, “The most basic signal that information is relevant is when content contains the same keywords as your search query. For example, with webpages, if those keywords appear on the page, or if they appear in the headings or body of the text, the information might be more relevant.”

How To Find and Select Keywords To Improve SEO

We’ve said that if you want to rank, you have to use the right keywords.

So, how do you know what keywords to use?

It's simple: You need the help of the right tool.

Thankfully, we have several tools for that. Google Trends is one and it’s free. You can also consider Keyword Finder from Ranktracker. It works exceptionally well and comes with a 7-day free trial period.

Tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs are also great. They work the same way and can help you see the terms that people search for and how your competitors rank on them.

Short or Long-Tail Keywords?

Short-tail keywords, also known as head terms, are keyword phrases consisting of no more than three words in total.

Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, consist of longer keyword phrases — usually more than three words.

Now, one of the questions most website owners ask is if they should use short or long-tail keywords.

The answer? A mix of both.

I’ll break it down.

Let’s assume you have two target keywords:

1. Business loans
2. How to apply for business loans

Which of these two would be easier to rank for?

Definitely, it’s #2. Why? Because it’s more specific than the #1 option.

The more ambiguous a keyword is, as in our #1, the more people will search for it, and thus, the stiffer the competition to rank for it.

Long-tail keywords, as in our #2, are more specific and usually won’t attract high search volume. However, when they do, they bring in a more relevant audience than their shorter counterparts because they address a specific query. That translates to low bounce rates and higher conversion.

So, why choose both?

It’s simple: You want long-tail keywords because they give you quick wins. Short-tail keywords, on the other hand, have too much search volume to be ignored. Strike a healthy mix of the two if you want to improve your SEO rankings.

2. Get High-Quality Content

Whenever someone searches for something online, search engines want to provide the user the most satisfactory answer for the query posed.

That means for you to rank high on the search engines, you must focus on creating “people first” content. That is, your content should be original, helpful, reliable, and of great value, clearly showing that you understand user intent.

Stick To the E-A-T-T Rule

Google, the world’s #1 search engine in user base size, assesses four aspects when determining content quality: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).

To improve your Google (or any other search engine) ranking and increase traffic, create high-quality content with a strong E-A-T-T. Otherwise, even the right keywords in your content won't count.

But what does strong E-A-T-T mean?

Let's see:

• Experience: Quality content should demonstrate your first-hand experience with the subject matter. Users appreciate it more if the insights they’re getting from you are tried, tested, and authentic.
• Expertise: Your content needs to show that you have the knowledge, qualifications, and credentials required to provide reliable information in that field. In niches such as financial and medical, readers want insights from an accredited professional.
• Authoritativeness: This doesn't lean on the content you create but the reputation you've mustered over the years.
• Trustworthiness: Edit your content for factual accuracy and use trustworthy sources for your information.

Of course, remember to complement your quality content with a rich snippet, a captivating meta title, and a frontloaded title tag.

By frontloading your title tag, I mean you should use your keyword at the beginning of your title tag. That’s because Google puts more weight on words appearing first in blog titles.

Ideal Length For A Blog Post

When writing content, most bloggers ask, “How long should my blog post be?”

The answer is simple: Just as long as it needs to be.

Joshua Hardwick, an SEO expert and head of content at Ahrefs says, “... hitting a certain word count shouldn’t be your aim. Your aim should be to write a thorough, engaging, and well-researched post that’s as long as it needs to be: no less and no more.”

If your blog post is less than 300 words, ask yourself whether you're adequately addressing the reader's expectations.

Several studies, including one by Ahrefs, show that long content ranks higher than short content.

Here’s why: Longer content is more likely to provide a complete, satisfactory answer to the user's query.

The chart below shows the correlation between word count and the amount of organic traffic.

Source: Ahrefs

Structure Your Content Well

How you present your content matters a lot. Even with the right thing to say, without a proper structure to present it, it becomes difficult for search engines to rank your content and for visitors to spend more than a few seconds on your page.

So, how do you organize your content?

Here are some essential tips:

• Use short paragraphs: Let each paragraph present a single idea in not more than three sentences.
• Use subheadings: H2s, H3s, H4s, and other subheadings make it easy for Web crawlers to understand what the sections entail and whether they’re relevant to answering user queries.
• Add images: Images support your content and make it easier to rank. However, stick to the best SEO practices for images to get the best outcome.
• Utilize bullet points: They summarize ideas in a concise manner, making your blog posts more user-friendly.

3. Get Backlinks From Authoritative Sites

Backlinks are links on other websites pointing to your website. Each backlink, or inbound link, you get conveys a strong message to search engines that the publisher trusts your content to be valuable, credible, and useful.

But does their vote change anything in search engines? Yes, it does — in a significant way. In fact, Google once revealed that backlinks are among the three most significant ranking factors.

Source: Search Engine Land

Choose Quality Over Quantity When Backlinking

While the role of backlinks in SEO is undeniable, not all links are the same. Search engines like Google put more weight on backlinks appearing on high domain authority (DA) websites than those used on websites with a low DA.

Why?

I’ll make it simpler to understand.

What would you trust more: something published by Harvard or a random guy's website?

Well, search engines are much like you in that regard. They trust the backlinks appearing on reputable websites more than the ones on low-authority websites.

So, get quality backlinks. Brian Dean, a renowned SEO expert and owner of the famous Backlinko blog says, “A single quality backlink can be more powerful than 1,000 low-quality backlinks.”

Yes, that's how much quality counts in this case.

And the way to the quality of a backlink?

We’ve got many tools for that. However, I prefer to use this backlink checker tool! It provides useful insights on each link’s quality and has lots of fancy features including first seen and last seen.

Ethical Ways To Find Quality Backlinks

You already know that you need quality backlinks.

Is finding them easy? NO. It takes time and resources.

But is it possible and worth the effort? YES!

Here are some of the innovative ways you can find quality backlinks:

• Guest Posting Services: This involves offering to write content for a high-authority site and get a link directing traffic back to your site.
• Mine for Broken Links: This method encompasses looking for broken links on authoritative sites, politely alerting the owner (or the website’s webmaster) on any that you find, and suggesting replacement with one directing to your relevant, high-quality content.
• Creating Visual Content: 91% of consumers prefer visuals over written content. That’s why creating high-quality visuals like infographics, charts, or slideshows is one of the best ways to get inbound links. As these pictorials spread across the web, you get to earn backlinks in the process.
• Look for Brand Mentions: Sometimes, your brand may get mentioned somewhere on a high-authority website without the link to it. In some cases, a customer may mention you in their review on a successful blog. You can take advantage of such situations by asking for credit.
• Publish Original Research: This is an excellent way to get a backlink from anyone who cites your research on their blog.

And when finding a backlink, use your target keyword as the anchor text. It will immensely boost your ranking on that specific target keyword.

Of course, you have to also get inbound links from different sources. There’s more weight when multiple successful sites are referring you. In simpler terms, 10 backlinks from different successful sites can help your content rank higher than 10 backlinks from one authoritative site.

4. Technical SEO Improvements

If your technical SEO is amiss, even the best content and the right keywords are meaningless.

You must design your website so that Google and other search engines can find, crawl, render, and index your web pages.

There are three main aspects to consider: indexing and crawlability, site structure and navigation, and site speed.

Crawlability and Indexing

Crawlability and indexing come before content ranking. Search engines often send out bots, or spiders, to discover new or updated content. Crawlability, therefore, is how easy it is for search engine bots to find your content.

Indexing, on the other hand, refers to adding the discovered content to search engines for ranking.

That means if the crawling and indexing are off, ranking becomes an impossibility.

So, take time to check whether all your pages are well-indexed. Check if the URL count in your database matches the indexed URLs. If there’s a mismatch, pinpoint the issue and have it solved by an expert.

And remember; with 92.3% of internet users accessing the internet on their mobile devices, Google now uses mobile-first indexing. Simply, that means Google prioritizes indexing the mobile version of a website’s content over its desktop version. And that means you have to also provide a mobile-friendly website.

On crawlability, ensure that your pages are crawlable by using the right structure. Also, keep the crawl budget optimized by removing duplicated pages, fixing broken links, and restricting the indexation of irrelevant content like terms and conditions, privacy policies, and outdated promotions.

Site Structure and Navigation

Site structure and navigation are very crucial elements of your site. Properly done, they can eliminate most indexing and crawling issues most websites experience.

The right structure helps users and bots navigate your site easily. Ideally, stick to a flat site architecture and ensure you have clear pagination and a clean sitemap with under 50,000 URLs.

Also, audit your internal links to ensure that each is properly anchored with text that clearly tells the user what to expect on the other side of the page. Of course, also pay attention and weed out any broken links and orphan pages.

Site Speed

Site speed affects user experience. Hence, for the best user experience, improve your blog's speed.

And how do you do that?

Surprisingly, there’s no one specific way to improve your site speed.

Site speed is the result of multiple technical improvements. If you pay attention to the small technical areas of your site, the synergistic effect will be improved site speed.

Here are some of the technical improvements you should make:

• Limit redirects
• Optimize your images by avoiding unnecessary ones, using compressed images, and using the best raster formats.
• Reduce server response time to preferably below 200 ms
• Enable compression by eliminating any unnecessary data
• Optimize CSS delivery
• Minify code by removing unnecessary items like commas, spaces, and formatting.

Proper adjustments in these areas will boost your site speed and enhance your optimization score. That will improve your SEO chances of success.

Plus, it will reduce bounce rates, as faster site speed makes the user feel more in control.

Shaun Anderson, a seasoned SEO expert at Hobo Web SEO consultancy, says 47% of consumers expect a page to load in 2 seconds or less, and 40% of users will abandon any site taking more than 3 seconds to load.

The implication? Site speed is priceless. It affects user experience, bounce rates, and conversion rates.

5. Leverage SEO Tools and Analytics To Improve SEO Performance

Of course, to have a successful SEO campaign, invest in the right tools. The SEO audit tools you use will determine what insights you get and whether they’ll give you success. So, work with the best tools in the industry.

Here are some of these tools:

• Google Analytics: This Google’s free tool tracks traffic and gives you essential information about your website. This includes bounce rates, time spent on your page, page views, and other information.

• Google Search Console: It’s also a free tool by Google. Use Google Console for important insights on your site’s search performance including click-through rates, keyword rankings, and other essential information.

Source: Backlinko

• Web Audit 2.0 Tool: It helps you know how optimized your site is and lets you diagnose and provide a way to fix any SEO problems. The Web Audit Tool isn’t a free version but comes with a 10-day free trial as a confidence booster.
• SEMrush: This is a paid tool with a free trial. It gives essential insights into keyword rankings, backlinks, competitor analysis, and more.
• Ahrefs: This paid tool is another great option that provides useful information on website traffic, keywords, content performance, and backlinks.

These tools can help you track your SEO performance, identify areas for improvement, and stay on top of your SEO strategy.

Conclusion

To remain in business in the coming days, ranking on Google and other search engines remains a prerequisite. It’s only if you’re visible on the internet that you can attract, engage, and convert prospects into customers.

Thankfully, although complex and an often dreaded endeavor, making your page rank on top search results isn’t impossible. It’s possible, especially with the expert insights provided in this article.