Congratulations, you went live with a website and you’re anxiously waiting for a thousands of people to come flowing to it from the search engines…. but it never seems to happen. This is what people commonly think when they create a website on the internet, only to find out that ranking in Google is a lot more complex and potentially costly than ever expected.
With more than a billion active websites on the internet today, this just means you are going to have a billion more websites you need to compete against. SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is the practice of not only improving your site to make sure it’s SEO friendly, but also to gain the necessary backlinks and social shares to help it rank in the search results.
For a website to rank at the top of Google for any specific term or keyword, it not only needs to provide a lot of value to an audience it also needs to have quality backlinks and references as well. This is just one of the many reasons why it’s very tough to rank in the search results for any generic keyword or terms. Nearly all of the websites that are already ranked for such terms will have thousands of backlinks to their website, while also being established in age and have several prominent articles and site partners on the internet. All of this is important, as it makes the ranking decision process much easier for Google to determine, by trusting the quality of such a site, the value they serve to an audience and how other authority sites link back to them.
With all of this in mind, there are still plenty of ways you can get your site to rank higher, even if it’s new. Today we are going to be looking at five of the most effective ways to rank a website higher in the search results.
1 – Write Longer and Better Content
No matter what type of website or online business you are have, if you want to rank in the search results you need to have high quality content that not only provides value but is also better than what is currently available from your competition. At the same time, it’s also important to understand that it’s much more valuable to have a very long article with thousands of words of content, versus coming out with a bunch of smaller articles with just a few hundreds of words of content. The best way to look at this is to think about how much more extra work you would have to do to promote each of these individual articles, versus just promoting one big article.
Before even writing any content for your website be sure to look at your competition and see who is currently ranking for keywords and searched terms you would also like to for. Look at the content they are creating and then think about how you can create it even better. Also explore new options for including visual content, images and online video.
2 – Use WordPress or WordPress SEO Plugins
In addition to the content that you create for your site, it’s also important to understand the best On-Site SEO methods. By using free WordPress tool like Yoast SEO, you can create custom titles and descriptions for each article you go live with on your site. At the same time, WordPress can make it easy for you to create permalinks that are search engine friendly and utilize the same keywords within your article in the URL of your site.
If you don’t have any experience with building a website of your own, and still aren’t sure on how to best create content that can rank in Google, we highly recommend you use the WordPress platform. Not only does it offer amazing SEO tools like Yoast SEO, it also has thousands of custom and premium WordPress themes and plugins that can help you with this process as well. The benefit here is that you basically don’t need to have any technical or design skills to create a successful site that can rank in the search results.
3 – Create a Unique Infographic to Be Shared By Others
In order to get more social shares in back link to your site, you need to be continually thinking about new ways to create original content that others find value in. With more audience is now focused on visual content and using social media, infographics are one of the best ways to accomplish this.
If you are already creating content for your website or blog, you can easily turn this into an infographic by using online software like Canva or hiring an outside design agency. Once you have an infographic created, you can then go live with it on your site and start promoting it through social media. At the same time, you can also add an embed form on your site which will allow other sites to use your infographic and sure to their audience. This works extremely well, as you are providing it easily to other site honors, and you will also in the process.
You can also post your visual content and infographics to high traffic websites like slideshare.net or even submit them to infographic directories. While the design and creation process of an infographic is important, the infographic marketing process is even more crucial.
4 – Guest Blogging and Contributing Content to Other Sites
When it comes to SEO in ranking in the search results, it’s all about getting quality backlinks from well-known and authority sites. There are basically only a few ways to accomplish this — which are to create original content that others find value in and simply link back to it as a resource (which isn’t often), paying for advertising or text content placement (which Google doesn’t approve of), or through the use of guest blogging and providing original contents other websites for free in exchange for a credit and often times a link back to your site.
The concept of guest blogging works extremely well and it’s simply one of the best ways to not only create backlinks to your site, it’s also perfect for showing off your expertise and putting you in front of a new audience. Since many websites and blogs are always looking for more content to also help them rank within the surf results, they will often have guest blogging opportunities on their website or blog.
To find some other time guest blogging opportunities today, all you need to do is visit Google and search for whatever type of industry or market you are in and then also include the words”write for us”. This will provide you with thousands of websites that are looking for guest writers.
Whenever writing for another website, always be sure to provide the most value possible and to always use your real name, profile picture, and link back to your website. Don’t forget, this isn’t just a method for building backlinks it’s also great for growing your brand and expertise in the process.
5 – Expert Roundups are Great for Brand Building and Backlinks
Have you ever taken a look at other authority figures, businesses, and brands within your niche and wanted to get them featured on your own site? If so, this is quite possible through the use of an expert roundup. In addition to getting amazing original content created for your site, expert roundups are also great for social shares and increasing links back to your site.
The way an expert roundup works is simple. The first thing you need to do is come up with a question to ask experts within your niche. Also make sure that this question is something that your audience is interested in, while also providing them with a solution in the process. After you come up with this question it’s then time to reach out to a bunch of industry experts that you would like to feature on your site. This is often done through email outreach for completing a form on their website. You can see a live example of an expert roundup in this whiteboard video resource roundup.
Once you’ve received enough responses from different experts within your industry or niche, you should then compile all of their information into one large expert roundup. After the article goes live on your site, you should focus on heavily promoting it, while also letting each of the experts know that they’ve been featured on your site. More often than not, they will not only share the content on social media, but they might also link back to it from their website as well.
How to Rank Your Website Above the Competition
After reading through each of the actionable methods above, you should now have a much better idea on how to improve your chances to rank higher in the search results. It’s not just about using the right content and creating value for your audience, it’s also about promoting it and making sure you are building a trustworthy brand in the process.
The game of SEO is one that takes a lot of time and patience. However, even small players and new websites can compete against some of the largest brands and websites in the world when they focus on creating original content and going after long tail keywords. Even with there being over a billion active websites on the internet today, and Google listing only ten organic links on each search ranking, it’s still a level playing field for those who are willing to put in the time and effort.
If you would like to learn more about the process of SEO and how to create a website that has the potential to rank higher in the search results, be sure to contact Web Design Team. Not only have we helped thousands of individuals, organizations, and brands create original content and help grow their business, we’ve also used the same methods to grow our business to what it is today as well.