Two Powerful Tips on How To Improve Your Search Engine Rankings In Google

Over the years I’ve been increasingly intrigued by which SEO strategies really help the most with improving search engine rankings in Google.

Besides the essential first steps like identifying relevant keyword phrases and optimizing your meta tags, I wanted to provide two specific tips that I’ve seen a lot of success with lately.

The two tactics that we’ll talk about below, combined together, can be incredibly powerful in terms of gaining more traction and improving your search engine rankings in Google.

Again, as stated in many of my previous blog posts, seeing movement in Google and the other major search engines is not an overnight process.

It will indeed take time and consistent effort on your end, but the hard work is worth it.

Ranking your blog articles or webpages highly in Google has the potential to bring in floods of traffic to your website (and quite passively).

For many webmasters, this could mean more exposure, leads, sales and returning customers.

This is why it’s such a competition to get ranked at the top of Google and why studying the process is so fascinating to me…I enjoy the challenge and know the rewards of obtaining high search engine rankings.

With that being said, in this post I’m going to provide you with two powerful methods I’ve been using to rank certain articles at the top of the search results.

How To Improve Search Engine Rankings in Google

Please note that these tips below are just a small part of an overall SEO strategy. They should be used in supplement with additional SEO tactics for the best results.

1.) Create Long-Form Style Content

Creating quality content is more important than ever now and especially because there is so much competition in any given niche. Generally the highest ranked articles in Google are ones that are written with the reader in mind, that help identify and solve problems, answer questions and provide immense value.

Along with quality, what really increases your chances of securing a top position in Google is by producing long-form style content.

When I say long-form, I’m referring to crafting content that is over 1,500 words long for your readers. The reason why Google will rank this type of article higher than an article that is 300 words for example is because there’s a lot more effort involved to create the longer piece. A longer article oftentimes covers a lot more ground as well and allows the writer to really go in depth.

Another benefit about writing longer content is that you have more room for optimizations within your actual copy. There’s additional opportunity to target your main keyword phrases/variations of keywords and also more opportunity to really utilize header tags to your advantage (H1, H2, H3, H4 etc.).

Long-form style content gives Google a lot to “grab a hold of” rather than a page that is super “thin”. Many SEO tools will even “flag” pages on your website that have a low word count and encourage you to add more copy. You need to show Google that you are producing valuable content that indeed took some time to put together.

Now of course not every blog post you write has to be this type of long-form style content. I’m totally guilty of still writing a 500-600 word blog post from time to time. But I would definitely recommend getting into the habit of weaving in these types of articles to your content strategy.

Do this over the long-term and track your progress using a ranking tools such as MOZ or Serpfox. This is just one step that can really improve your search engine rankings overtime.

Now for tip #2!

2.) Build Backlinks to Specific Pages/Posts

Most of us know that building quality links on other authoritative websites is absolutely critical to a successful SEO campaign. But one problem I see often is that too many people build links that point to just their homepage. Now I do recommend acquiring links for your homepage on occasion, but I also would encourage you to build links to individual posts/pages that you want to rank for. This really diversifies your link building strategy and helps pass link equity/juice to a specific page.

Another area I will use this strategy on is for keywords where I’m ranking on page #2 of Google. This tells me that I’m within striking distance and can most likely push to the first page of Google with more quality links built (and to that specific ranking page/post). This is an excellent way to build up page authority and encourage ranking movement in the search results.

Probably the simplest way to master this technique is through guest posting.

For example, I once had a blog post that was hovering between position #11-14 for a couple of months (top of page #2 in Google) and for a really strong keyword. This particular keyword had approximately 1,000 searches per month. I knew if I could get to the first page of Google, even within the first #1-6 positions, I could capture a portion of the organic traffic for that given keyword.

I used the same exact strategy we’re discussing here and over the next few months, I started targeting that page in my guest posting efforts. I would reach out to other relevant websites in my niche and offer to write a guest post for them. Within my article, I placed a link to that specific blog post that had been hovering on page #2 for a while.

Slowly but surely, I built a bunch of quality links to this particular blog post.

Lo and behold, after approximately 6-8 months I started noticing significant improvements in my ranking position for that term and page. I had jumped up to the #5 position on page #1 of Google. Now as of writing this today, I hover anywhere from position #3-6, but this is a noticeable improvement thanks to building links to that specific page.

How do I plan on securing the top spot for this term in Google?

Same exact method laid out above…I’ll continue to build quality links to this page.

One important thing to note about search engine rankings is that you’re not always going to secure the top spot and in some cases you won’t even make it to the first page of Google. That’s just the way it is with SEO.

However, you give yourself a heck of a chance by producing long-form/quality content and also building links to these pages. If you practice this process for long enough, you really should be able to improve your Google rankings quite substantially.

Conclusion:

To close, use the two steps laid out above together for the best results and overall search engine ranking improvements. Produce long-form style content based around certain keyword phrases and then build quality backlinks to those pages. This will show Google that your articles are highly valuable through in-depth writing and also important since other websites are linking back to them. This is a recipe for success if you’re looking to improve your search engine rankings and drive more targeted traffic to your website!

What strategies do you currently use to improve your Google rankings?

Have you had success with any of the tips above?

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Below is the video version of this post:

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