Three Tips to Rank Higher on the SERPs
The online platform gives the frequent opportunities to businesses for growth. It is one of the channels where audiences from the different fields seek for an information they want. A website then has become a fastener element in any businesses marketing mix.
Not only does the website provide you with an extra outlet for the communicating with prospects, it also gives another way to secure or even close transactions. This then widens the reach, since it breaks down the physical barrier with its global availability.
The challenge here, though, is getting people to your site.
The website is useless if it does not serve its purpose, whether it is for brand awareness, customer service, or conversions. Search engines are one of best sources of traffic since they provide end users the road map for navigating the web.
The competition for the high search rankings, although, is extremely tough. But these efforts would always be worth it because ranking high on an organic search results is definitely free and passive source of traffic. Just remember to use white hat techniques to avoid penalization.
Let us look at the few simple tips to rank higher on the SERPs.
Make content for people rather than for crawlers
Quality content should king. This might be giveaway already, but there are still so many sites that have the low quality content and are over-optimized. People used to manipulate crawlers before in order to get the high SERP rankings and traffic. Luckily, there are now couple of reasons why low quality content does not fly around anymore on search results.
Search market leader Google aims to bring the people the most useful and applicable information available on its index. This then prompted its developers to find ways of filter out bad sites that gave poor user experience. For example, Google Panda and Penguin, punish content forms and those which use black hat tactics like keyword stuffing and cloaking. This lessened immaterial and underserving sites that rank high in SERPs.
Another major update that should know about is Google Hummingbird. This major algorithm rework judged the relevancy of an article in human-like manner. It does so by asking questions and excavating deeper to article’s concept by substituting the nouns from query with other relevant words found in its database. It is programmed to look for content that provides answers to people’s questions. Among the kinds of content that are Humming-bird friendly provided they are written well are: evergreen posts, how to FAQs, case studies, viral materials, top tips from expert opinions, and in depth analysis. These kind of content are favored by the Google since they provide value by being an educational or entertaining in nature rather than pushing for too much hard sell.
Analytics Expert Neil Patel conducted the case study to determine any correlation between in depth content, rankings and conversions. He has found out that length of content really has some correlation to SERPs rankings and conversions. Here are the major takeaways
• Webpages that rank on the Googles first page have an average of 2,000 words in its content
• Posts with more than 1,500 words receive 68.1 percent more tweets and 22.6 percent more Facebook Likes than posts with less than 1,500 words
• Long copy converts better by 45.45 percent
He adds that should not write an article with the 2,000 words just for sake of it. Getting straight to the point is very important here since readers and search engines have ways of knowing if you are just playing with keyboard.
If you are thinking about writing the piece about the niche but are not sure what to write about, there are tools online that could give some inspiration. Google’s search bar is one of an easiest tools to use, since suggestion it gives is based from most popular queries on its database.
In my search query the ‘value of mobile apps’, among the suggestions are the ‘business value of mobile apps in meetings’. What is amazing here is that Google got context of my query, and it immediately applied it for the specific function, which is to use mobile applications for meetings. It appeared there because it is one of queries many people are entering at the Google search for this specific set of keywords.
Unfortunately, there have already been some few people who have written about subject. You could either try to write it in different way such as
a) “the benefits of using mobile apps in business meetings” or
b) apply “the value of mobile apps” in another area like “managing startups” or
c) “doing better at school”.
This gives you chance to look for content that fewer people have written about, potentially allowing you better search results in that area.
After writing the big content, consider putting it on the company blog. It is one of Google’s recommended ways since it gives the opportunity to provide fresh material for their end users. Aside from that, your entry may serve as link attraction for natural links.
Manual link building
Search engines work by following links on site continuously, in order to bring the most relevant content to the end user. One of biggest factors for search rankings is quantity of high-quality links that directs back to site.
If your natural links are not enough in improving your SERPs rankings, then you should definitely try manual link building. This involves an emailing bloggers and webmasters, and then asking them if you could publish an article in their site as guest blogger. The article you are diving should link back to your site preferably to one of your blog posts as one of your sources since you had want some of their domain authority to rub onto yours. Always remember yotheur value proposition, since no webmaster or blogger would accept an article that would not be of any value to them or their audience.
Build up the social network engagement
Not only does social media directs traffic to your site, but it is also among the factors for better rankings, proven by this test by SEO wizard Rand Fishkin. Google and Bing look at social authority of publisher and consider the volume of RTs and shares of the certain piece as evidence that it is, in fact, useful.
This requires authors to build an active profile on the social networking sites. You can do this simply by sharing your live articles there and engaging in the conversations when people comment on it. Answering their questions and commenting on their opinions leaves the impression that you really know what you are writing about.
You can also encourage readers to share the content by adding strong calls to action if they have found the article useful. Chances are, people from their social circles would also be interested since some of them are working in same field.
Lastly, if you are using WordPress, install the Sharebar plug in to make social sharing easier for the readers. This application lets people see how many social shares a piece of content has, which gives them the validation that what they are reading is content of lawful quality.
Conclusion
Building an authority and ranking high on SERPs is tough, but the rewards are always great. With all the standards of search engines have set to filter out less quality sites, there is simply no shortcut to getting to top of SERPs. You are going to have to invest lot of time writing linkable assets to the company’s blog, doing email outreach, and ultimately lot of sharing and conversations via your social networks. These little things stack up.
In the end, it is always feels nicer to rank high legitimately through the hard work than to always be nervous of any upcoming Google update that could make your site sink to the bottom of the search results.
