With so much competition and evolving algorithms, it can be extremely challenging to get your website to the top of Google. Still, you can optimize your pages with the right focus.

With careful planning and the right strategies, you should be able to get your website to rank higher on your target keywords within days. You might even get to the top page within a few months.

Ranking toward the top of a keyword's SERP (search results page) can directly increase traffic to your site--leading to more sign-ups and stronger brand awareness. Indirectly, higher rankings and awareness on a specific topic like "ski vacations for families" can help you grow your authority on related topics like "winter travel ideas with kids."

Top-ranked pages enjoy steady traffic over time, adding to your brand's credibility and authority. Not to mention, that traffic is free. Aside from the overhead costs of putting out content, there are no fees of ongoing costs to budget for.

In this guide, we will look at what makes some websites rank higher on the SERP and what you can do to help your website's rankings.

How Google Finds and Ranks Pages

It helps to understand how search engines work to fully understand why some of these elements are so important. Here's a quick rundown:

Google uses a three-step process to find, organize, and rank web pages:

  • Crawling: Google’s bots (also called crawlers or spiders) scan the web by following links from page to page. They look for new or updated pages and collect text, images, and other media.
  • Indexing: After crawling a page, Google processes its content and adds it to a massive database (Google Index). It stores details about the page so it can retrieve it for searches.
  • Ranking: When a user searches a phrase, Google’s algorithms sort through indexed pages and rank them based on relevance, quality, and other factors. The goal is to show the best results at the top. (We call that searched phrase a "keyword," even if they used 3 to 4 words to search.)

Ultimately, the best results at the top of the SERP are authoritative, helpful, well-rounded, and written with clear details that answer what your searcher is hoping to find.

The first step lies in strong content development.

Content Development

An effective SEO strategy creates valuable and high-quality content. It engages readers and encourages them to link back to your site. Still, as powerful as strong content is, it takes a few more steps to be successful.

This involves creating and managing the actual content that users will see. It spans more than just blog posts: think infographics, videos, guides and product pages. Good content strategy makes your website more attractive to both users and search engines by providing valuable, relevant, and engaging content.

1: Create Content that Adds Value

The key to ranking your site higher is by creating valuable, high-quality content that people will want to read and link to. Easily said, right? If you break it down into these disciplines, you'll be much closer to reaching that goal.

Match The Search Intent

Go back to that part about "high-quality content that people want to read." That's not just because it's enjoyable, but because your page solves their problem. Remember that we're talking about pages that appear on a search results page. Google is taking its best shot at serving solutions to the user.

Google is not a mind reader (ahem, yet), so it relies on any clues in the search as well as the signals inside your content--and that of thousands of related pages on the topic. All of this is to offer the closest match to answer what the user wanted to find.

You need to be relevant to your audience's current needs, answer their pain points, and somewhat predict what they will want to know.

The phrase "transportation for 5 people from Denver airport to Vail" is a detailed, long tail keyword. It's specific enough that the searcher should find some good options with just a few clicks. But they know what they mean. For all you know, they could be arranging a ride from an airport or trying to learn more about what is available: scheduled shuttles, private drivers, a bus.

In this case, matching search intent is looking for clues in the targeted keyword so you know what to put on your pages. If you write about the transportation options that are available, you might also include links to arrange a shuttle, hire a private driver, or book tickets for a bus. That covers different intentions the searcher could have had. Now you're power-delivering value.

I used the term "targeted keyword" because keywords are infinite. You aren't getting a list in advance of what people are going to ask for in the future. Your best shot at that is watching for patterns of what people search now and seeing what searches your current content--and your competitors' content--ranks for. We'll talk about that in a bit.

Foster Engagement by Speaking to Your Audience

When your content offers value to your audience, and it's enjoyable to read, it will make them stay on your site for longer. This can positively affect your rankings, according to experts like Larry Kim, who conducted studies identifying a correlation between longer dwell time and higher search engine rankings.

Find your voice and speak to your audience. Think about the earlier example of sharing tips on arranging a ski vacation for a family. If you keep that reader in mind--the one who is juggling budgets, different ages, and food preferences–you can write more mindfully.

You are likely to answer important questions about how to get younger kids into ski lessons while allowing older kids independence and flexibility on the slopes. This makes your content more relatable but also unique in what it offers. You're giving a point of view that's worth sharing, and that makes you link-worthy.

And that leads beautifully to our next point.

2: Create Content that Earns Links and Builds Authority

Focus on your audience's needs long enough, and you can energize your SEO strategy. You will be attracting a steady flow of inbound links by creating high-quality content that other websites will want to link to, building relationships with other website owners, and guest posting on relevant websites.

And relevance is key.

A Stone Temple study proved that links from highly-relevant sites with high authority could help your website rank higher on Google.

Image Source: Stone Temple (page no longer available)

This makes it crucial to develop valuable content if you want to get your website to the top of Google. You can use content research tools like BuzzSumo to identify the most shared and trending pieces of content. This will help you brainstorm ideas for content that your target audience will love. You can also conduct polls and surveys to directly ask your audience what they want to see from you.

3: Create More Long-Form Content

You can also rank your website higher on Google by creating more long-form content. Long-form content lets you go in-depth into whatever topic you’re discussing, so by nature that leads to content that's more informative and insightful. As you cover more ground that your audience wants to know, you'll get more engagement, increasing your dwell time and helping you rank your site higher.

Besides, people love sharing long-form content. A BuzzSumo analysis of 100 million articles found that long-form content gets more social shares. Articles between 3,000 and 10,000 words got the most shares, followed by articles between 2,000 and 3,000 words. More social shares will result in higher visibility and increased traffic, which is crucial to get your website to the top of Google.

Image Source: OkDork

In short, this is structuring your content in a way that it can be easily picked up by Google as a featured snippet or passage, thus improving visibility.

Not every SERP is the same. Searches like "things to do in Miami" or "how to paint furniture" don't have one specific answer. Google offers their best suggestions for you to follow, but all of the tips will be different. Facts like "what time is it in London right now" or "when is Labor Day this year" can be answered clearly. You might get London's time at the top of the page without needing to click. Or, the first Monday in September appears in the search bar as you type.

Google serves up short answers in various formats: featured snippets and AI Overviews. They tend to stand out from the rest of the results page, so these are hot formats to target.

Variations in your content help your chances

  • A short and clear paragraph can answer a direct question
  • Numbered steps are better for "how to" questions
  • Images and videos stand out visually on the SERP

Results in Google’s Answer Boxes are even more prominent than the number one position in Google search results as you can see in the screenshot below.

Image Source: Google search results

If your content appears in this section, it gains a lot more visibility and is likely to drive a lot of clicks and traffic. This fuels your effort to get your website to the top of Google search results.

You can optimize your site for Google’s Answer Box by using question phrases to optimize your content. According to an analysis by seoClarity, question phrases like “how” and “what” were the top two keywords that trigger featured snippets.

Image Source: seoClarity

You can use tools like Answer the Public to identify what top questions people are asking about a specific topic. Optimizing your content with these question phrases can also help you cater to voice searchers who tend to ask conversational questions.

Further, use H2 tags properly in your subheadings to help Google understand that you’re answering a question. Familiarize yourself with structured data markup to format your specific set-up so that you're more likely to get tapped for things like recipes and news when appropriate.

These efforts will improve your chances of getting the featured snippet for relevant keywords and help you rank your site higher.

5: Target New Developments to Rank for Google News

Ranking your content on Google News is a great way to gain authority links from sites that would want to cite you as a source. This can eventually build up and improve your domain authority, which further helps you get a higher ranking.

So if your goal is to get your website to the top of Google, you should also consider getting ranked among Google News results.

Since major news outlets will consistently get the top news results, you should adjust your targets to aim for specific developments within your industry. This could be breaking news, fresh updates on a hot topic, or in-depth interviews with people at the center of the happenings.

On-Page SEO and Technical Optimization

Google favors pages that deliver a good experience to the user. The Content Strategy that we just covered does its part by delivering compelling ideas that answer your searcher's intent. To do service to your well-crafted content, you have to make the page's technical performance shine, too. This includes the behind-the-scenes aspects that help search engines better crawl, index, and understand your site. It also involves strategies to enhance your site’s credibility and navigability.

6: Optimize Your Page Structure and Meta Elements

Your headers should create the right page structure of main ideas supported by subtopics. These are labeled H1 (main idea) and H2 with more details organized at the H3 and H4 levels.

It's good practice for keeping your thoughts organized while you create the content. Good headers also carry the reader through the page and tell search engines what your page is about.

Make sure you address these elements on every page.

1. H1 & H2 Title Text: The H1 and H2 title text should break up the main content of the page by describing it using relevant keywords. The text in the H1 heading carries more weight in terms of signaling the main topic or theme of the page to search engines. On a user-focused front, clear H tags help readers navigate the page more effectively, enhancing the user experience.

2. Image Optimization and Alt Text: Your alt text is not the space for stuffing keywords into sneaky spots. Use it to make your page more accessible, describing the image to those using page readers. Save the keyword tie-ins for your image captions. Google Lens and AI technologies are making it easier for search engines and AI models to recognize relevant text in your image. Keep it hyper-relevant.

3. Keyword in Content: The focus keyword should appear at least once in the content of the page. Try highlighting the keywords through bold text to help search engines recognize its importance. I like this practice to remind myself if I am skipping past some important explanations of topics that the audience could use clarification on.

While it is important to optimize these elements for search engines, it is equally important to ensure that the content remains user-friendly and relevant to human readers. Google always reminds us: write for humans, not search engines. Be sure to work the keywords in naturally without overloading the page with them.

7: Optimize Your Meta Tags (Title and Description)

Like your page URL, your meta tags are minute but important factors that can influence your page ranking. You’ll need to optimize both your title tag and your meta description to help both search engines and users in understanding your page content.

The meta description tag itself is not a direct ranking factor in SEO. However, it still plays a significant role in SEO, because that's the text that searchers are most likely to read when they're skimming results on the SERP. It tells them about your content and piques their interest.

With a relevant and compelling description, you can help increase your click-through rate. Ultimately, more clicks is what SEO is about. (And a higher click-through rate could eventually pay off in higher ranks.)

Here are a few best practices to help you optimize your meta tag and get your website to rank higher:

  1. Include your target keyword in the title. The previously-cited Cognitive SEO study found that this can make all the difference between ranking 1st and 2nd.
  2. Similarly, optimize your meta descriptions with relevant keywords without overstuffing. Use them naturally so that the description flows well and is understandable for both search engines and humans.
  3. Keep your titles easily understood and enticing. The average title length in organic search results is 55 characters. Shoot for the 60-65 character range, but don't go past 70.
  4. Write a clear, concise summary as your meta description. Keep it under 160 characters, as anything over that might not display fully in Google search results.

8: Optimize Your URLs

As minor as it may seem, your URL structure is an important consideration to improve your ranking. On its own, it may not have a massive impact on your search engine ranking.

But if you want to get your website to the top of Google search results, you can’t afford to ignore even the minutest factors that can influence your ranking.

Here are some of the best practices to create SEO-friendly URLs:

  1. Keep them short and to the point. A Quick Sprout study found that the top 10 results on Google had an average of 37 characters in their URL. URLs containing 35 to 40 characters seem to perform much better, according to their study.
  2. Use hyphens instead of underscores to separate your words. This makes it easier for Google to understand what your page is all about. Google’s Matt Cutts has also explained that Google ignores underscores while considering hyphens as separators.
  3. Add keywords naturally to improve relevance signals and help Google understand where to rank your site. Although this is a small factor, it still plays a crucial role if your end goal is to get your website to the top of Google.

Shaun Anderson of Hobo even conducted an experiment in which he found that the ranking of a page gradually declined when the keyword was removed from the URL slug. And a Cognitive SEO study found that the top-ranking page is three times more likely than the second-ranking page to have a keyword in its URL.

Image Source: Cognitive SEO

Avoid using extraneous characters like @, &, $, or % in your URL, as they can confuse search engine crawlers. Only 0.194% of the top 100 results for 1,000 results across multiple industries contained extraneous characters in their URL, according to the Quick Sprout study cited earlier.

9: Optimize Your Anchor Text

This step means carefully choosing the visible text part of links to ensure they are informative and keyword-relevant, aiding in better indexing and understanding of your site content by search engines.

Anchor text optimization is another crucial step to get your website to the top of Google search results. The anchor text you use to link to other pages can help Google understand what the page is about, helping it list the pages accurately.

So using relevant keywords as anchor text is an excellent way to guide search engines and help them understand your page content and rank your site higher.

There are five different types of anchor texts that you should know about:

  • Exact Match Anchor Text – An exact match anchor text uses a keyword mirroring the page you’re linking to. For example, “SEO strategies” linking to a page that covers SEO strategies would be an exact match anchor text. These are ideal for helping Google understand what the linked-to page contains.
  • Partial Match Anchor Text – This type of anchor text includes a variation of the main keyword on the page you’re linking to. For example, “content optimization strategies” linking to a page that talks about content optimization. These are also an excellent alternative to exact match anchor texts as they’re still relevant to the linked-to page topic.

Here’s an example in which we’ve used the anchor text “SEO strategies” to link to a post that explains SEO for beginners.

  • Branded Anchor Text – As the name suggests, this type of anchor text uses a brand name. For example, “SpyFu” linking to a SpyFu blog post. Overusing this type of anchor text may be considered suspicious and manipulative. Avoid using it more than once in your blog posts. Here’s an example from one of our blog posts.
  • Naked Link – When a URL acts as an anchor, it is considered a naked link anchor. These anchors may not be the best option if you’re trying to link to content within blog posts, as they could hamper reader experience.
  • Generic Anchor Text – Generic anchor text is a generic word of phrase that links to other pages. “Learn more” or “click here” are some examples of generic anchor text. They’re not very ideal for SEO because Google has no way of understanding the content of the linked-to page and its relevance to the linking page.

Google’s Gary Illyes has said explicitly that there are no penalties for over-optimizing your internal linking anchor texts. This means that you can use exact match anchor text however much you want to for your internal links.

Anchor texts of backlinks are less in your control but possibly more important. You can request particular phrasing when another site agrees to link to you, but more often you get what they want to use. Google values anchor texts because they provide neutral, accurate descriptions of web pages. Much like with meta descriptions, it helps the reader understand why they might want to click through.

That said, it’s still a good idea to use synonyms and variations to maintain a natural flow in your articles instead of trying to force exact match anchor text.

Displaying rich snippets in your search engine results is one of the best ways to get more clicks to your site. This, in turn, helps improve your ranking and can eventually help you get your website to the top of Google search results.

The Structured Data on your page HTML helps Google in displaying accurate rich snippets for searchers to see. It could include information such as price, rating, stock availability, and more.

So searchers get an accurate picture of whether or not the product or content is relevant to them. This is a great way to minimize bounces as well, since most of the clicks will be from relevant searchers.

Image Source: Google search results

Google’s John Mueller has also clarified that the use of Structured Data makes it easier for Google to understand in which searches it should display your page. In other words, it improves your targeting and makes it easier to rank your page for relevant search results even if it doesn’t directly affect ranking.

The more you rank for relevant keywords, the more relevant traffic you’ll get. All of this helps rank your site higher over time.

11: Improve Page Load Speed and Mobile Friendliness

By now, Google has made it clear that user experience is critical. A website should be mobile-friendly, fast loading, easy to use (clear navigation, few pop-ups, etc.), secure (i.e., HTTPS not HTTP), well-structured, and free of other technical SEO issues.

Many of these qualities are measured through Core Web Vitals, found in Google Search Console. Three key metrics form the criteria for how a page meets user experience:

  • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures how quickly the main content loads.
  • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures unexpected layout shifts during interaction.
  • Interaction to Next Paint (INP): Measures how fast the page responds to user actions.

Google makes page experience a direct ranking factor rather than just an indirect influence. Now, Core Web Vitals—along with other UX metrics—determine your page experience score, which can directly impact your rankings. A strong page experience can boost your position, while a poor one may cause your ranking to drop.

Further, a fast-loading page enhances the user experience, which is likely to reduce the number of bounces. This could eventually contribute to a higher ranking on Google search engine results.

You can use the Google PageSpeed Insights to see just how fast your website loads. In addition to analyzing your page load speed on mobile and desktop, this tool also shows you some opportunities to speed up your page load time.

Image Source: PageSpeed Insights

A mobile-friendly website should have a responsive design. Being responsive means that the site adjusts its layout when a user pulls it up on a mobile device. The type is larger and in a tighter format (fewer words per line), includes easy-to-click buttons, and images fit the screen appropriately. Whatever the user needs to do on the site to have a successful interaction (read, click, fill out a form, select dates) happens easily.

To make a site fast loading, images should be compressed, and the site should use a content delivery network (CDN) and caching. A site should have clear navigation, an intuitive user interface, and easy-to-find content.

Google's emphasis on user experience and Core Web Vitals has been building for some time. Even the page layout update in 2012 put a higher value on pages that delivered user-focused content as soon as they landed on the page. It de-valued ad-intensive pages that cluttered the reader's experience.

A user-friendly layout contributes to a good user experience. When visitors can easily navigate through a website, find relevant content, and are not hindered by excessive ads, it enhances their overall satisfaction. Therefore, a user-friendly layout is an important factor in providing a good user experience.

12: Diagnose and Fix Other Technical Issues

If your Core Web Vitals look good, you've optimized for SEO, and your pages still aren’t ranking, other technical issues might be the culprit. Google Search Console can help identify crawl errors and indexing issues. This helps you see how Google views your site and can highlight problems like broken links or inaccessible pages.

Find Technical SEO Issues in GSC:

  1. Identify Issues: For a specific page, use GSC's URL Inspection tool. The Indexing section (Indexing>Pages) also shines light on specific errors holding back some pages.
  2. Prioritize Fixes: Focus on high-impact issues first, such as pages that can't be crawled or indexed.
  3. Implement Solutions: Work with your developer to address these issues, or research solutions to handle them yourself. You might chunk tasks together like "pages to redirect" or "broken links."

Find Technical SEO issues with Screaming Frog:

Screaming Frog boasts a solid reputation for good reason. It's a reliable and effective way to troubleshoot technical SEO issues. It has an extensive use list, so check their guide to find the best ways to weed out broken links, crawl errors, duplicate content, and canonical tag issues.

Off-Page SEO and Local Optimization

Strategies in this group extend beyond your website, focusing on building your site's reputation and visibility. This weaves together outreach, multi-channel presence, and optimizing your site's connection with specific geographical areas.

Backlinks are a crucial aspect of SEO, as they serve as a signal of trust and authority to search engines like Google. The more high-quality backlinks a webpage has, the higher it is likely to rank on the search engine results page.

Links to your page can be external and internal:
Backlinks are links to your page from other websites. (External links) Internal links are made from one of your pages to another on your website. They help signal that you dive into a related topic on another page.

Backlinks that come from topically relevant websites or pages are your goal. Google sees them as strong ranking signals, and they are valuable toward lifting your ranks.

Older advice said that links from .edu and .gov domains carried more weight, but that's no longer the case. Google looks for quality content and authority. Sites with those top level domains (URL endings) might prove more authoritative by nature of their organizations behind them, but the ending alone isn't what Google measures.

A backlink's age or "freshness" can be interpreted two ways. Newer links suggest that a page has been recently vetted and comes across as valuable. Older links, on the other hand, speak to stability. SEO authority Ann Smarty lays out ways in which backlink age might play into a page's SEO power.

Internal links (one of your pages to another on your site) help you establish proper site architecture. That helps Google smoothly crawl through every page on your site and list them in relevant search results. That's a bonus for your site's crawl experience, and it's helpful for your readers. Internal links let them follow through to deeper, more detailed information on a topic without pulling away from your current topic.

According to Moz, the optimal website structure is in the shape of a pyramid with minimal links between the homepage and other pages. Instead, you’ll have the homepage linking to main category pages, which will in turn link to product pages.

Image Source: Moz

When you link blog posts, first create a comprehensive pillar post on a specific topic. From that, link to other relevant posts that discuss specific tactics or subtopics in detail.

For instance, if you have one pillar post on SEO as a whole, you can link to several other posts that discuss specific SEO tactics like anchor text optimization and backlink strategies.

Further, the anchor text of internal links serves as a strong relevance signal for Google. It gives your readers a clue to the topic of the linked page, helping Google understand its context and relevance.

14: Optimize Your Google Business Profile

Ranking higher on local search results is another crucial step to get ranked on top of Google’s organic search results.

And the best way to improve your local ranking is by optimizing your Google Business Profile. Moz found that Google Business signals played the most important role in ranking your business in the local pack.

As you already know, results in the local pack tend to be much more prominent than any other search result.

Image Source: Google search results

Your Google Business Profile signals also affect your local organic ranking as a whole, according to the Moz analysis. This makes it crucial to optimize your listing if you want to rank higher on Google search results.

Here are a few tips that can help you do that:

  1. Make sure you fill out all the details of your business correctly. This would include your business name, address, contact information, website URL, category, business hours, and description. Your business name should be exactly as it is in real life, and every other information you provide should be correct.
  2. Google now allows you to include a business description in your GBP listing. However, the description should not exceed 750 words. You can also optimize this description with relevant keywords in a natural flow.
  3. Include pictures to accurately represent your business and make your listing more prominent and compelling.
  4. Create GBP posts to announce upcoming events, sales, or products to keep people updated about your business.
    Encourage your customers to leave reviews about your business, products, and services to make sure that your listing stands out.

You can also check out some of the more detailed guidelines from Google on how to accurately represent your business through GBP listings.

15: Be Mindful of Location

If you are creating content about visiting national parks in Australia, it helps to have a .au domain. More specific, this is a country-code top level domain (ccTLD). For the most part, they are just like general top-level domains, but you might get a small bump for location-specific content.

It serves as a clear indicator to Google (and other search engines) that your content is relevant and specifically tailored to users in a particular country. Having a ccTLD helps to establish credibility in that region, increasing your chances of ranking higher in local search results. Users can see your website as being more relevant and valuable in the specific country you are targeting. If your goal is to perform well in a particular region, having a ccTLD could help in more ways than just ranking.

16: Improve Your Social Signals

Google doesn’t consider social signals as a direct ranking factor. However, with some studies showing a strong correlation between good social media presence and higher search engine ranking, it's worth a shot.

Cognitive SEO, for instance, found that pages with higher search engine rankings tend to have a larger social media presence.

Image Source: Cognitive SEO

They contend that the number of likes, comments, and shares you get on social media has some impact on your ranking. This is likely because increased social media activity improves visibility, which can further increase your traffic.

As you try other techniques to get your website to the top of Google search results, work on boosting your social media presence too. Engaging with your audience and sharing valuable content with them is a smart practice.

Additionally, you can conduct polls, ask them questions, etc. to make it more interactive and garner higher engagements.

17: Write Guest Posts for Relevant Partner Pages

Guest posting is still a viable all-around visibility strategy. Plus, you get backlinks and exposure to a new, built-in audience.

By getting published on a reputable site, you build your credibility in the industry and potentially attract more clicks to your site. All of this contributes to a higher Domain Authority, and eventually, this helps you get ranked on top of Google’s organic search results.

For instance, Adam Enfroy published eight guest posts in 15 days. He earned 247 new backlinks, 32 new referring domains, and 268 new organic keywords that ranked in the top 100. His Alexa Rank improved by 600,000, organic traffic increased by 372%, and domain rating improved by +12.

But my advice: instead of sending out blanket pitches, come up with a proper plan:

  1. Reach out to relevant websites with a strong SEO presence.
  2. Suggest a topic that matches their site's tone and themes. Be ready with an outline of what you would cover.
  3. Offer examples of your past posts.
  4. Avoid being too pushy in your outreach emails if you want your pitch to be accepted. Be friendly and polite, and don’t hesitate to follow up at least once.

Tracking and Continuous Improvement

Outside efforts can contribute to getting you to the top of Google search results. This includes regular analysis and updates to your SEO strategy and leveraging paid advertising to complement organic efforts.

Here are a few additional ideas:

18: Keep an Eye on SEO Performance and Competition

To make your SEO work focused and effective, you'll need to effective keyword research: Narrow down a list of focus keywords that are both relevant to your business and have the potential to drive traffic to your site.

It can be a big project at first, but then you maintain it over time in short bursts.

A Quick Keyword Research Primer

Your keyword research should begin with the core idea of your topic, wrapped in a short phrase. "Vegetarian meals" is a good example. From there, here's where you dig deeper to create solid content:

  • Research the keyword's stats: search volume, ranking difficulty, estimated clicks, etc. This helps you set a pattern for gauging which keywords to prioritize.
  • Research the keyword's competition: all of the other websites that rank for it and even those that buy ads on it
  • Discover related, long-tail keywords that you can target. "Vegetarian meals" would spring toward "vegetarian meals without cheese" or "vegetarian meal planning."
  • Keep a list of questions that people ask about your keyword topic. You can find these through SpyFu's keyword search, through Answer the Public, or through Google's SERP where it shows "questions people ask." You should answer these in your content.
Keyword Research Tips

Building content on similar keywords helps you support your overall authority on the topic. Or, you can take some of the lower search volume terms as inspiration as you build an outline of what to cover in your article on the main topic. They might be subtopics that you elaborate on.

We also like the idea of using questions as section headers. Even if you don't use the question verbatim as the title of your section, your answer to that question will become a welcome addition to help round out your content.

Understand that keyword research could be the reason you move away from a keyword. That's perfectly okay. If it looks difficult to rank for your target keyword, it’s probably best to pursue a different keyword (for now). You can use keyword research tools to identify related keywords with lower competition and higher search volume to focus on instead.

All of this is tough to roll up into just one section. You can find more details about how to get the most out of keyword research so that you build your content on a good foundation.

Understand Your Competition's Keywords Too

Your SEO performance is relative to your competition. While you track your own growth and improvement (a must), you also need to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing.

Analyze their content, their most dominant keywords that they rank for, and how much traffic their individual pages pull in. All of that is ongoing feedback to improve upon it in your own content strategy.High-ranking content is built on good keyword research and good competitor research. Both of those are ongoing practices, and they can be done with the help of dedicated tools like SpyFu.

Use Keyword and Competitive Research Tools to Help

Competitors can be excellent inspiration--not just for topics to cover but for content types too. Both of your websites might rank for the core industry keywords, but what if they have comprehensive guides when you have short blog articles?

Their ranked content can help you objectively see areas where you could improve. This is true not just for your gaps in content, but also for existing content to see where you they delivered more value to the reader. Use these ideas to help drive what you add to your articles or how to expand your videos to get to the top of Google.

To evaluate the competition, you can review the quality of their content, the number of backlinks they have, their domain authority, and their overall reputation in the industry. It's a time-consuming effort, which explains why 3rd party tools are so popular in delivering that kind of insight.

The SpyFu Competitors tool, for example, works two-fold: it helps you gauge your top organic competitors' performances over time. (And make sure you look at the history to get more than just a current snapshot.) It also identifies emerging websites in your niche or those that you might have overlooked as a true competitor.

Because even if you can't recognize them, they are still in a position to be siphoning clicks away from your content. These small-to-medium businesses are important in your competitive research for other reasons. Very large, national competitors are helpful to learn from, but they are too large to be your only target. Few sites outrank them, so it's more effective to roll your efforts into outranking similar-sized competitors.

Image Source: SpyFu

19. SEO As an Ongoing Process

Continual review is important because every piece can always be improved. That's one of the biggest reasons for tracking your results–the hits and misses. You can then adjust your SEO strategy accordingly to achieve better results.

What kind of steps go into adjusting your strategy?

You should focus extra time on keywords that aren't moving enough and repeat the steps you took that brought results in the past.

Embrace Every Step of the Improvement Cycle

A good improvement cycle allows you to constantly evaluate the performance of your campaign and make constructive adjustments to improve overall outcomes.

It's a cycle:

  1. You start by researching topics that make for good content on your website. (Keyword research)
  2. Then you create the content and measure it again. That measurement tells you what you need to improve. Maybe your page didn't address certain subtopics well enough. Or maybe you didn't offer enough examples.
  3. That takes you back to the creation point of the cycle where you're writing to update and improve your page.

Think of it like content gap analysis at the page level. If content gap analysis highlights topics you haven't written about, page-level gap analysis finds highly relevant subtopics that would make your page a far more helpful and robust resource.

A more helpful, robust resource is more likely to satisfy a search than a thinner piece. Expect it to jump higher on the SERP, but it takes work and focus to get there.

We like RivalFlow AI for its automated page-level improvements. It runs that gap analysis for you, using your higher-ranking SERP competitors for inspiration on details and subtopics that you might have missed. Then use RivalFlow's generated text to fill those content gaps and help lift your page's ranks.

Pay Attention to Algorithm Changes and Reactions

You should also keep up with the latest algorithm updates and make necessary adjustments based on recommendations that experts and SEO specialists are more than happy to share.

Staying on top of industry news keeps you in the loop and keeps you confident in your decisions. Follow blogs like Search Engine Journal, Subscribe to SEO newsletters (I personally love Rebel Mouse and the SEO insights they offer) and follow knowledgeable voices on social media. That gives you more insight into what Google updates mean for your site than just the straight forward description of the updates themselves.

Final Thoughts: Focus on these Critical Points

Getting to the top of Google SERPs requires a balance of high-quality content and targeted keyword research.

Lifting your ranks across relevant keywords will take a two-pronged approach. Both Content Strategy and Technical Optimization are key to getting your website to rank higher. No shortcuts.

Focus on making small improvements that build up into long-term best practices. Going too fast could overwhelm you, and it's helpful to take small steps in case you ever need to dial things back. (This is a good rule of thumb when you update your content.)

We've covered a lot of ground, so let's end with a reminder on what to keep top of mind when you're getting your content to rank higher:

  • Intent and Relevance: Create content that answers different aspects of what users are looking for. Stronger relevance will increase your chances of ranking higher for more specific terms. (Terms more likely to earn conversions)
  • Content Quality: Google looks for authority and trustworthiness of a page, and that comes through in the substance of your content and links to the page.
  • User Experience: Your website should be easy to use without frustration or even small annoyances. Skip the bombardment of pop-ups and make the pages work well across the most common devices.

Building a solid SEO strategy doesn't happen overnight, so don't rush things. Be methodical and careful in your choices since one good practice can turn into an "aha" moment that you carry across your site.