Optimise for On-Page SEO

After you’ve created excellent content for your readers, ensure that search engines understand what’s on your pages. Follow these on-page SEO best practices to help Google crawl and index your pages correctly: Create engaging title tags and meta descriptions to appear in search results and encourage click-throughs. Use H2, H3, and H4 headers to organise content and demonstrate how ideas connect. Create descriptive URLs that include keywords and convey the page’s content. Include alt tags that describe the image’s content.

Keyword Research

When developing your SEO game plan and initial setup, keyword research should be the first step. When creating your sitemap, choose a few keywords you want to rank for on each website page. To find and select keywords to target, use Google’s Keyword Planner. To begin, create a sample user persona to help you understand what your typical customer searches for when looking for the products/services you offer. If you want to sell SEO services, your typical customer might search for “search engine marketing agency or search engine services.” When we look at the sample search terms, it will be easier to determine which keywords to target.

Analyse Competitor Keywords

Other businesses have already ranked on Google for similar services or products to yours. You can use Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends to identify the keywords everyone in your industry is attempting to rank for. Filtering options include location, commercial value, purpose, and search volume. You can also use third-party keyword analysis software to help you with your keyword strategy. SEMRush and Ahrefs are go-to tools for determining your competitors’ keywords. With their assistance, you can fine-tune your keyword research even further. Make a spreadsheet of your competitors’ main internal sites, including the homepage, with the help of any marketing agency. You can manually navigate to any of those pages and open the source code to inspect the title, metadata, and so on.

Increase Your Page Speed

According to Google research, the longer it takes for a page to load, the higher the bounce rate. As a result, web pages that load quickly typically rank higher than those that keep visitors staring impatiently at their screens. Use free tracking tools like PageSpeed Insights to evaluate your site on a regular basis and ensure it’s loading quickly. This tool assesses the time it takes for the page’s largest visual element to render (largest contentful paint), the page to become visually stable (cumulative layout shift), and an active engagement to be performed (first input delay).

Target Featured Snippets

A featured snippet is a link to a web page that provides a detailed response to a user’s query. Google extracts this snippet from the web page and prominently displays it on the first page of the SERPS, after paid search results but before organic search results. The key to landing a featured snippet is first to ensure that you follow all of the other tips for having a high-ranking page above. Then, examine the type of snippet that is currently ranking first for the target keyword (although not all search results have a featured snippet). It could be a few sentences that answer a question succinctly, a numbered list, a series of bullets, or a how-to video. Examine the current featured snippet to outrank your competitors.

Build Valuable Backlinks

You must create backlinks. Look at the number of backlinks your competitors have to a specific page that is outranking you to get an idea of how many you need. Link building can be challenging. Google will reward backlinks from high DA (Domain Authority) websites. It is critical to prioritise quality over quantity when it comes to backlinks. Create excellent outreach materials to aid in the acquisition of these high-quality links. Infographics, blogs, and video creation are all excellent examples of outreach when link building. Also, make certain that the backlinks you obtain are topical and relevant to your business. If you have a backlink on a forum for teeth cleaning, but your company offers marketing solutions, that link will be less valuable.

Update Content Regularly

Your job continues when you create good content or a good service page for your website. You must pay attention to your website after it is created to maintain your ranking. It’s critical to check in on your web pages on a regular basis to ensure they’re up to date and optimised. One part of your effort should be to find new relevant keywords and create content around those keywords, while the other part should be to visit all of the pages on your website on a regular basis to ensure that they remain relevant and contain valuable information.

Create Interlink Opportunities

Interlinking is also a great and simple way to boost keyword rankings for a page with which you want to outrank competitors. Do you have service pages or a blog that is updated monthly? These pages must link back to the original page for which you want to improve its ranking. Creating internal links across multiple pages of your website boosts traffic to a specific page, increases average page views, and lowers your bounce rate. All of these factors contribute to your domain authority and can help you rank higher.

Outdo Competitor Content

With your keywords in hand, your next task is to create useful content that Google considers worthy of the coveted top spots on the SERPs. This entails raising the content bar as high as possible. You will only get somewhere by paraphrasing content from other websites. In fact, we recommend ignoring search engines during the writing process and focusing on providing unique, insightful information to your human readers that they would share with colleagues and friends. Ensure your content responds to the search intent behind each query and provides a satisfying experience for your reader. Look at pages that are currently performing well in search and try to improve on them for inspiration. Any search engine marketing agency will support this. 

Improve Your Site Structure

Examine the structure of your website to ensure it is logical and well-organized. If you’re stuck for ideas, look at competing websites to see what information they highlight. Well-designed websites typically have a hierarchical structure, with the most important information at the top and broad keywords targeted. Each subsequent level includes more information and focuses on more specific keywords. This structure allows users to easily find the information they seek while allowing search engines to understand your content.

Write high-quality, informative content

One of the most important things you can do to outrank your competitors on Google is to create amazing content that both your current and future customers want to read. Examine what’s popular on Google and social media to get a sense of what people want. Concentrate on creating content that satisfies users’ search intent—content that helps users achieve their goal of typing the query into Google search. Make sure your content contains useful information and that you answer questions thoroughly. It’s simple to find topics to discuss in greater depth by using Google’s People Also Ask boxes and related keywords.

Create a Mobile-Friendly Website

Google has a separate mobile search index. This is because they want to ensure users have a positive experience on mobile and web searches. This is where mobile or responsive web design comes into play. Websites were previously viewed on desktop computers or laptop screens. These screens are landscape, which means the width is greater than the height. On the other hand, mobile phones have screens in portrait orientation, meaning that the height is greater than the width. 

Track Rankings & Metrics

As you consistently implement these tactics, your site should begin to outrank the competition on Google. Ideally, you should see an increase in the number of keywords you rank and higher search position rankings. Check to see if your improved rankings are resulting in more organic traffic and conversions. Otherwise, you may not target your industry’s most relevant keywords. Search engine marketing results change due to algorithm changes and changes in your competitors’ SEO strategies. By monitoring your rankings, you’ll be able to see where you’re succeeding and respond quickly to any drops in your search visibility.