10 ways to rank higher in Google search results

How well is your business doing in Google search results? And when was the last time you really considered this?

Google is one of the best marketing tools out there. When used effectively, potential customers can find you very easily. You can also run a wide-variety of different ads e.g. search result ads or YouTube ads, and utilise many more elements.

In this article, I’m going to discuss how to rank higher specifically in Google search. By ranking higher, you’re more likely to increase the traffic to your webpage, and therefore more people will see your content and find your business.

So let’s dive in.

1. Target realistic keywords

There are a lot of free keyword search tools out there. Ensuring your website and blogs are populated with the right and best-for-you keywords is a proven way to increase your website traffic.

I suggest tools like?Google Keyword Research?planner and?Wordstream.

2. Include meaningful visuals

Populating your blog and website with imagery and video content specifically around the content you’re writing for is important. Too often businesses will include random stock images because they know they need to include an image, but the image has no real relevance to the article. Or it doesn’t contribute anything. Instead, include screenshots or your own imagery.

3. Start backlinking

Backlinking is when reputable and trustworthy sources on the internet link back to your content or your website. The more you backlink, the more trustworthy Google will see your content as, and then show it to more people. Keep in mind there are a number of shady backlinking methods out there, so ensure whoever does your backlinking is a professional.

4. Include more lists in your blogs

When you Google search for something, often when you click to expand a page before actually clicking on the page, you’ll see short summarised lists of the main points of the blog. By including more lists in your blogs, you’re more likely to come up as one of these options in the Google search. You’re essentially doing some of the work for Google.

5. Make explicit statements

Not rude ones. But hooks. Quick stats from reports or data. Google likes this type of information and is good at finding these sentences in your content, then showing it to people in their Google search.

6. Make your content skimmable

Our eyes don’t like big chunks of text. If you’ve written a lot of text, it’s likely people won’t read all of it. Break your blogs up by using the correct H1 and H2 title settings, including images throughout to break up the content, and make your words make logical sense in the order you’ve written them.

7. Write long form content

In-depth, long-form content on the keyword you’re targeting. Currently, long-form keywords are doing very well. This simply means people are now typing longer sentences into Google than shorter ones. Now this is most apparent with blog posts, but you can do this for landing pages as well. Think about the exact wording that people will be typing into Google to potentially get to you.

8. Optimise your Meta titles

Stick with 60 characters or less for your SEO title, front-load the keyword, and pay attention to modifiers that seem to be popular, like with the year in the title.

9. Check the keyword intent

There are 4 main keyword intents: informational, commercial, transactional and navigational. To rank higher in Google, you need to mainly aim to use informational keywords.?

10. You’re writing for people, not computers

There are a lot of technical ways you can rank higher in Google search. Ultimately remember you’re creating content and blogs for people, not computers. Google is showing people what it thinks people want to see. If you’re not writing for people, it’s likely your content won’t be shown in the way you want it to be.