How to Rank Higher on Google (6 Easy Steps)

How to Rank Higher on Google

(6 Easy Steps)

Nothing is more frustrating than seeing your website rank on the umpteenth page of Google, despite your continued efforts to climb the ranks.

I know this because I’ve been there many times.

Sometimes it feels like no matter what you do, nothing works. Google seems to hate your website, and you have no idea why.

If that sounds all too familiar, then you’re in the right place.

Step 1: Find underperforming keywords

Most SEOs preach finding your page two rankings, then trying to push them to page one.

That seems logical, but there are two reasons why this isn’t a great idea:

It’s not always easy to improve rankings by 10+ spots.

Merely ranking on page 1 shouldn’t be your goal if you want more traffic.

Step 2. Pick a keyword to rank higher for

Every keyword in this filtered report is one for which you already rank, but not in pole position. That means there’s still room for improvement.

The next step is to skim this list for keywords that you most want to improve rankings.

Having said that, there’s no point chasing rankings for low-value keywords, or those that are likely to be difficult work. So here are a few things to look for to identify the best candidates.

.Step 3. Figure out why you’re being outranked

One web page can outrank another for hundreds of reasons, but don’t let that discourage you.

Many people (including us) have studied various “ranking factors” on numerous occasions and found three things to correlate highly with rankings and traffic time and time again:

Number of referring domains
Page authority
Website authority

Step 4. Beat the other pages where it matters

You should now have some idea as to why you’re being outranked, so the next task is to plug those holes.

Here’s a simple guide to doing that:

If the number of referring domains is the main issue

Build more high-quality links to your page. It’s as simple as that.

There are tons of ways to do this: guest posting, replicating your competitor’s links, “skyscraper” link building, pursuing unlinked mentions, etc.

Step 5. Track rankings

It goes without saying that if your goal is to rank higher on Google, then you need to track your rankings. Otherwise, you have no way of knowing whether your efforts are moving the needle.

For that, you need a rank tracking tool like Ahrefs Rank Tracker.

Step 6. Repeat for other keywords

Ranking high for one keyword is great. But ranking high for many is even better.

So once this process works for one keyword, go back to step one and repeat the cycle from start to finish. Then do it again, and again.

In time, you’ll rank high for hundreds of keywords and get tons of organic traffic every month, just like us.

Rankings are overrated; traffic is what counts

We analyzed the top 10 pages for more than 100,000 keywords and found that the top-ranking result gets the most organic traffic only 49% of the time.

So, believe it or not, SEO isn’t all about ranking #1 for your target keyword.

To illustrate why this is the case, take a look at the SERP for the keyword, “keyword research.”