Rank a website in google top page - step by step guide learning

5 Strategies to Rank Your Website on the First Page of Google

Ever wondered how to get your website to the top of the search results? Well, the wait is over. The following strategies will get your website to a first-page position with the rewards of flowing traffic and new clients to your site.

Make the right keyword selection
A common mistake by many businesses is to attempt to optimize for the wrong keyword-or even worse, choose no keyword at all.

The keyword you choose for your business should describe what you offer as a service or product. It seems simple enough but there are so many ways to phrase the same thing that research is needed to make sure you’re the keyword you’re attempting to rank for is a good match for your site.

When you choose a keyword it should describe your business but it also needs to represent a minimum amount of traffic as well as be a realistic keyword in which you can rank on the first page. This is where keyword tools come in handy.

Use Moz keyword explorer to analyze the keyword of your choice. You can get an idea for how much search volume your keyword represents as well as how difficult it will be to rank for it. Moz will even list the top three competitors that currently rank for that keyword.

You can check the domains that rank in the top three spots for how many back-links they have by copying the URL of the ranking page and plugging it into the link explorer. This will give you a back-link report so you can see the quality and quantity of referring domains that point to the ranking page.

Use this information to make a much more educated decision on the impact the keyword has on your business.

Create depth in your content
Once you have decided on the best keyword, you will need to create content to support your status as having an expert opinion. Google loves websites that demonstrate expert opinion through related content published and linked to a keyword-optimized page.

Establish the major topics that are directly linked to your keyword idea. Go through the same process of determining keywords for additional pages on your site. Find the best keywords that you can include in a long-tail key phrase.

The idea is to rank these articles for less competitive phrases that may not bring in as much traffic as your main keyword but will contribute to the relevance and credibility of your main keyword. These articles will also lead you visitors to your main keyword page by linking to it within the body of content.

This subtle strategy takes a hub and spoke structure and is commonly used to optimize and organize the content on a website to highlight the most important keywords and topics.

Speed up your pages load time
Google has stated that page speed is a ranking factor so increasing the load time of your pages should be a regular commitment in order to maintain a competitive edge. Not only will slow page speed hurt your ranking but it also causes an increase in the bounce rate of your website. People get impatient when a page takes too long to load and will back out and look for another option.

Recommended For You Webcast, October 15th: Your Baby is Ugly - Live Rapid-Fire Website Reviews Register Now
You can test your page speed by using any of the tools that appear in a search for “page speed testing tools.” Google offers Page Speed Insights in which you can type the URL of your site and get a score based on the time it takes for the first appearance of meaningful content.

A report is provided at the bottom of the page to indicate where you can improve the time it takes your pages to load.

You can be proactive at reducing your page speed by making sure your images are reduced to the size that is needed for your site. Delete any plugins that you aren’t using as they too will clutter your header with JavaScript and code which causes search engines to take a longer time to parse.

Reach out for credibility
Most pages that rank on the first page have back-links to add to the credibility of their content. You will need to make a list of sites that will link to your content in order to receive enough credibility and authority to outrank your competition.

If your brand has been in the news or is a semi-known name you can look for unlinked brand mentions to earn some back-links. You can start by searching Google for mentions of your site. Use this search operative to exclude your own site and any social media links (they don’t count for much in terms of authority).

intext:[insert company name] -companyname.com -twitter.com -facebook.com -pinterest.com -youtube.com

The results will display websites who have mentioned your brand in their content. When you find a website that has mentioned your company name but hasn’t linked to you, simply reaches out with an email asking them if they would mind adding an anchor text link from your company name to your website.

The odds are if they have already mentioned your brand in their content, they won’t be opposed to linking to you as well.

Broadcast your content
Whenever you publish a piece of content that’s worth sharing, post it to every social media profile you own. Leave a call to action on the post asking readers to share with their network. Leaving a call to action can get you 4 times as many shares than the post alone.

As your network grows so will the power to generate traffic to your website. Although social signals count for very little towards ranking, you have a better chance of acquiring more back-links when more traffic is being driven to your site.

SEO for small businesses is not an option when it comes to getting your site to the first page of Google. It’s a regular part of doing business and should be implemented as early on in the life of your website. The earlier you get started the more prominence and authority your company will develop in the search results. Establishing authority in your industry will contribute to driving the most traffic from competitive positions on the first page of Google.

Google on How to Rank Category Pages

Google’s John Mueller answered a question about how to rank a category page over a product page. Along the way he discussed how links are viewed by Google and the negative ranking effect of keyword stuffing. 

How to Rank a Category Page? 

The publisher’s product page was ranking for a keyword phrase. But they felt that the appropriate page should be the category page. The publisher confirmed that the category page was indexed. 

Internal Linking for Ranking a Category Page 

John Mueller answered: 

“Some of the things I think you should look at here, one thing is to make sure that the category page is well-linked within your website. 

So if you have multiple products that are all in the same category or related to that category then link to that category page so that when we crawl the website we can really understand this category page is actually really important.” 

Less than optimal site architecture is something I have seen in client website audits. A poor navigational structure can keep users and bots from reaching the pages you want them to find. This can add an unnecessary one or two clicks toward reaching a category page. 

Category pages are useful pages for users and for ranking, particularly for the more general two word phrases. 

User Intent and Product Pages that Rank 

Something John Mueller didn’t discuss, perhaps because he was taking the publisher at their word, is that Google’s algorithm may sometimes understand that a certain percentage of users are looking for a specific product when they use a general phrase. 

In that case, the publisher’s specific page may be the right page to show, better than the category page. 

Of course, the best outcome would be to show both pages, the category page and the product page. The point I want to make is that the reason a specific page is shown may be a reflection of what users want. 

Keyword Stuffing can Cause Inability to Rank 

Mueller then goes on to suggest that a reason a category page might not rank is because of too many keywords. This is called keyword stuffing (or term spamming). 

There is a lot of nuance to this topic and maybe it’s best for it’s own article about keyword best practices. The key point is that excessive keyword use, according to John Mueller, can cause the page to be less trusted and affect it’s ability to rank. 

John Mueller said: 

“Another thing that I sometimes see, especially with e-commerce sites that kind of struggle with this kind of a problem is that they go to an extreme on the category page in that they include those keywords over and over and over again. 

And what happens in our systems then is we look at this page and we see these keywords repeated so often on that page that we think well, something is kind of fishy with this page, with regards to these keywords, well maybe we should be more careful when we show it.” 

What do you think Mueller mean by a page being fishy? I believe it mostly means that a page has the appearance of being untrustworthy. 

Mueller then goes on to recommend moderation in the use of keywords. 

“So it might be that you’re… kind of overdoing it with the category page in that it would perhaps make sense to kind of move back a little bit and say, I will focus my category page on these keywords and make sure that it’s a good page for that but not go too far overboard. 

So that when we look at this page we’ll see… this is a reasonable page, there’s good content here, we can show it for these terms. We don’t have to worry about whether or not someone is trying to unnaturally overdo it with those keywords. “ 

Link Building to Help Rank a Category Page The publisher then asked if building external links into the category page, as well as to the website home page, would be helpful. 

At this point, when the discussion turned to building links, Mueller appeared to become somewhat measured in his response. He affirmed that yes, links can help a category page rank in Google. But his voice contained what I felt was a guarded affirmation. His full response included his advice against building artificial links. 

“Yeahhh… I… I mean… that’s that’s something doesn’t… doesn’t cause any problems and from our point of view, uhm…in general backlinks from other websites are something that we would see as something that would evolve naturally over time.” 

Interesting answer, right? Links, from Google’s point of view, are something that evolve (naturally) over time. 

There is so much that can be inferred from that statement with regards to the speed and pace of link building. 

However, it’s just one sentence with no further discussion to give it more context. Best to not read too much into that sentence. Yet it is still worth taking note of it. 

John Mueller Advises Against Artificial Links 

Mueller goes on to advise against building artificial links. Google has published a Webmaster Help Page about link schemes that is worth reading if there’s a question about what constitutes “artificial links.” 

This what Mueller advised: 

“So I don’t think you’d need to go out and kind of artificially go out and artificially build backlinks to a category page like that.” 

Fixing a Category Page Ranking is a Long Term Project 

John Mueller advises that fixing the category page ranking issue should be considered as a long term project. I believe many in the search community would find that statement debatable. Changes to a page can lead to ranking change within days. I know this for a fact as I have experienced this as recently as the past month. 

Nevertheless, I tend to agree with Mueller that it’s best to see ranking a category page as a long term project. Internal linking patterns and (lack of) links from outside the site can play a role. 

Here’s what Mueller said: 

“I think, what I would also do in a case like this is kind of go with the assumption that you won’t be able to fix this very quickly. Not, not that it’s impossible but kind of assume that it’s… it’s going to stick around a little bit because sometimes our algorithms do take a bit of time to adjust. 

And… find a way to make it so that when users land on that product page that they realize there’s actually a category page that might be more useful to them. 

So, something like a small banner or some other visual element on the page so that when users go to that product page they can find their way to the category page fairly easily… so that you don’t have to worry about the short term problem that maybe the wrong page is ranking. 

And in the meantime you can kind of work on creating a reasonable solution for the category page itself.” 

Takeaways for Ranking Category Pages Here are the key points: 

1. Optimize internal linking.Make sure category page is well linked to within site 

2. Don’t keyword spam Repeating keywords can cause Google to regard the page with caution 

3. Links are Good. But…Mueller agreed that links are good but cautioned against artificially creating inbound links. 

4. Make it easy for users to find the category page When the product page is ranking where the category page should rank, Mueller suggests adjusting the product page to make it easier for users to find the category page. 

I have reservations on that last point. I’m not saying that John Mueller is wrong. I’m simply adding additional observations based on my experience. 

Google tends to show specific product pages for specific search queries (like sizes, colors and models). Google tends to show more category or informational pages for vague queries. 

It’s odd for Google to show a product page for a general term. To me it makes sense to rank a product page for a general search term if there’s evidence that a percentage of users seek a specific product when searching with a general phrase.