9 Steps and SEO Tools to Get Your Website Ranking

You’ve poured your heart, soul, and likely some cash into creating a stellar website. Now what? How do you get clicks that make it all worth your while? Navigating the world of search engine optimization isn’t easy. There’s a lot of conflicting information out there, and a lot of SEO tools that don’t carry much benefit. How do you sort through all this information and trim the fat to get to what you really want – a nice juicy search engine website ranking and an arsenal of SEO tools!

This article is going to get straight to the point of it all – what search engine marketing steps you should start taking on your website as well as a list of SEO tools to use to get the traffic you’ve been waiting to see. Let’s get started!

 

Step 1

You should familiarize yourself with how Google’s algorithm works to rank webpages. Keep in mind, Google’s algorithms are constantly changing behind the scenes, so it’s important to regularly re-familiarize yourself with the way they’re doing things. You’re never going to fully know how their algorithms work, most of the information regarding it is speculation based on what has worked for people and what hasn’t. As of now, the biggest things that weigh positively based on their algorithm is having a mobile-friendly website, integrating with local search results (i.e. Google Maps), and avoiding spam and unnatural links.

SEO Tools: For keeping on top of Google’s changes, there’s Moz – which keeps track of changes through history.

 

Step 2 

Where do you stand now on your search ranking? Knowing where you currently stand is essential when trying to learn how to improve. You should also check that your site is adequately performing in speed and health. Having poor speed or site problems can cause a huge drop in organic traffic; it can even get you banned by Google in its entirety.

SEO Tools: SERP is very easy and straightforward and lets you know what your ranking is within seconds. For checking the health of your website, use Domain Health Report and simply enter your domain name. Pingdom is a quick and easy way to check your website’s speed.

 

Step 3

Track the metrics that are vital to your website in order to understand what is in need of improvement.

• Organic Search Traffic: This drives over 5 times more traffic than paid channels, and even trumps social media traffic drive. You can keep track of your organic search traffic by using Google Analytics.
• Organic Conversions: What keywords are effective at getting people to visit your site? Preform a SERP Scan to find out. Once you know which keywords are driving traffic to your website, you can pay attention to using them.
• Commercial Keywords: These are keywords that make you money, they’re words or phrases that are specifically searched by people looking to buy something. Informational keywords are great for generating traffic, but they’re typically searched only by those who are looking for an information – for example, this article is using an informational keyword in the headline – “how to get your website ranked”. If it was changed into a commercial keyword to attract those looking to purchase a service for SEO, it would say something like – “best services for SEO”. A mix of commercial and informational keywords is your best bet.

SEO Tools: Aside from Google Analytics and SERP Scan mentioned above, you can use Bringshare to keep track of all the metrics you’re using on your site.

 

Step 4

Our mobile phones are taking over our lives – and that’s not always a bad thing. Knowing how prominent our phones are in our lives and how much we use them for makes it clear that you need to have a website that is optimized for mobile use. Did you know that 60% of searches take place on our phones? It’s essential to have a mobile site! Another benefit to having a mobile site is that you’re able to enable local search functionality, which Google’s search algorithm totally loves. How can you do this? Create a Google business profile and keep it updated and flushed with information. Why limit yourself to Google? Make yourself well-known on all of the sites that provide local listings, especially Yelp and Facebook.

SEO Tools: Not sure if your site is mobile friendly or not? Google has the answer for you in a simple yes or no fashion! If the answer is no, and you don’t have a solution for this problem – there are services that will provide a quick solution to optimizing your site for mobile. Mobify and bMobilized are two good ones, but there are also plugins you can use to fix the problem yourself. Is your website on a WordPress platform? WPtouch is a plugin that will convert your site to be mobile friendly.

 

 

Step 5

When you ran a search for your website on Domain Health Report, did you find that you were penalized in any way? You can’t build upon a broken foundation – so let’s make sure those cracks are filled.

• Spammy Links: The links that appear on your site need to be natural. You can’t trick the system. Not sure if you have spammy links? Use Ahrefs to verify your backlinks. They’ll automatically analyze your site for links that could be incurring you penalties. It’s important to remove these links or your site may not show up in search results at all.

SEO Tools: Ahrefs is the best tool for the job in this case. Unfortunately, removing links is a bit of a process. You have to request links to be removed or tagged for nofollow by site owners that are posting your link. Here is a helpful guide for getting website owners to remove your link. If they won’t remove your link, or you can’t contact them for some reason, you can have Google disavow links.

 

Step 6

A little keyword research goes a long way for improving SEO. You need to understand not just which keywords to use, but how keywords work. Keywords basically pinpoint what users are typing into the search bar in order to find your site, or sites like it (if you search competitors’ sites keywords, you can copy them to help improve your own ranking). You can find these keywords with Google Keyword Planner. Through that, you can tailor your content and the headlines for it with words that are going to get hits on Google. Remember – you should have both informational and commercial keywords! Keep in mind that these keywords must look natural, and ideally be natural.

SEO Tools: Google Keyword Planner is your best bet with finding keywords that work for you.

 

Step 7

Implementing your keywords is the next step. There are a few things to consider while you do this.

• Title tags are not obsolete – not yet, and not anytime soon. Make sure that your title tags provide solid descriptions, are unique, and use your target keywords. Create variations among your title tags so that you get a wider reach. Keep them natural! Don’t force it.
• Use a sitemap to help search engines understand how your site content is organized. This will help your ranking by making it easier for Google to rank it in the first place.

SEO Tools: XML-sitemaps is a great tool for generating a sitemap that you should absolutely take advantage of.

Step 8

For your website to succeed, it has to have a reason beyond just showing up in search results. And in order to show up in search results anyway, you need great content. Your content should have a demographic – a specific group of people. Who do you envision using your product or service? Who do you think would be most interested in reading your content? That is the group of people you should be directing your materials towards. When you reach your target market, your website’s reach will grow exponentially as your loyal fans share your content with other people that may be interested. Word of mouth isn’t dead, people! So, what are some techniques that help make good content into great content?

• Be informative and post data-driven content. What’s better than having a reputation for being reliable and trustworthy? It’ll make people more likely to share your site and more eager to visit time after time.
• Tell stories! People want to know about you, and how certain things come to be. Tell stories about topics, share history, encourage discussion.
• Uniqueness has a hard time dying. If you have a unique message that your audience may be interested in, you should roll with it. Your message should work to connect your audience to you, and cater to their questions or concerns.
• Include a little of yourself in your content. Did you know that “I”s and “me”s perform better than “we”s? People want to know about the person behind the site. However, your personal information that you include such as stories, experiences, or advice based on your own life should always be genuine. Sooner or later, the truth always comes out.
• Have you made use of the call to action? You need a way to close up your great content and prompt people to take the action you want them to. Calls to action have their own science. What do you want people to do? Tell them that. Are you selling an e-book? Try something like: “add to cart” instead of “buy now”.

SEO Tools: Unbounce can help you come up with better alternatives for call to action filter buttons. Give them a try and get rid of your generic buttons that don’t work.

 

Step 9

Add links to your content arsenal. Links that redirect to your own content are called internal links. These are written within the content and are meant to bring your site visitors where you want them to go, and where they need to go for you to succeed. Adding images also helps do this in its own way. It gives you a spot on Google Images, which further increases the chance of someone clicking.

SEO Tools: You can find more information here about different types of links and how they can benefit your site, as well as more information about getting your website ranked on Google.

 

 

What it all comes down to is learning how to work the system. There are different elements, all equally important, that go into improving your website ranking. These SEO strategies will help your website perform better than it ever has. It’s worth taking the time to understand who your target audience is and what they’re looking for. That way, you can tailor your content to them.

The rest of the puzzle is just technique, a little vigilance, and working the algorithm. Nothing beats quality content, though, and ensuring quality content is your first priority will work for you more than any other SEO strategy will.

 

 

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