5 Easy Steps to Get Your Website Ranked

In an ideal SEO scenario, having the ability to make a few changes to your website and immediately have your website rank #1 for your chosen keyword would be perfect. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy and you have to play the long game when it comes to SEO optimizsation as there’s no shortcut to your wanted success.

In this post, we’ll look at what steps are needed in order to increase your visibility and help your website rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). However, before we go ahead with breaking down the points, there’s probably an important question in your mind:

How long will it take for my Google ranking to improve?

The truth is, there’s no real answer and it depends on a lot of different factors. However hard that is to take, it’s the honest truth. There are different variables that need to be considered such as the current status of your website, the competition within your chosen field, how your website compares with others within your industry etc. Take these factors into account and you’ll get a better understanding of whether it will be sooner or later when you’ll see results.

If you want to have an average indicator, then it can be anywhere from 3-6 months. But again, this is dependent on the factors mentioned above.

How can rankings improve?

Various SEO companies and businesses have different success with their optimization strategies. It requires a lot of hard work and dedicated time before you begin to see results but there are basic optimization changes that you can make that will see results.

So, if you’re looking to boost traffic and conversions for your website then here are 5 steps that you can take to achieve just that in the future.

Ensure you have a solid foundation in your website

A big mistake that SEO’s can make with their websites is creating a website that is difficult to use. The website can have poor navigation and architecture which can hinder users but also google crawlers that are reviewing your website. As a result, your rankings will take a hit.

There are ways you can avoid this from happening. In particular, consider conducting a technical audit which reviews the technical aspects of your website and whether they are functioning and have been applied correctly. Correcting what’s below the surface will improve the surface above it and help your website to meet the signals that Google uses to rank your website.

Optimize your website for mobile

Search engines now prioritize how your website functions and looks on mobile over desktop since the introduction of mobile-first indexing. This is where you need to question what the common goals are for your users on mobile and how you can cater to this. Can they achieve what they want through a mobile platform? How does the website perform on mobile?

There is also the important consideration of load speeds. Since July 2018, page speed is considered by Google as one of their ranking factors to help rank websites. When we think of users on mobile, they tend to want results quickly whilst on the go which is why page loads speeds are vital for a positive user experience.

Consider your site speed

We discussed this in the last paragraph but it needs to be noted that how quick your site is also relates to desktop in general. Essentially, ensure that your site is as quick as can be regardless.

There are handy tools available that can help with testing the speed of your site, including the official Google Page Speed Tool. There are several ways that you can quicken the speed of your site for optimum experience for your users:

• Reducing image size: Where possible, try to compress your images in a way that doesn’t reduce the quality but decreases the file size of your image
• Enable browser caching: When a page is loaded on a web browser, it loads different elements of the page in order for the page to be reviewed by the user. Browser caching allows for these elements to be stored on the local computer so it can be saved for when the user decides to go back to the page
• Handling scripts: Scripts are programming languages which provide instructions in a file that allow the interactive elements of a website to work. Before you decide to incorporate these into your website, consider whether you actually need these scripts on your website as they can slow it down. If there’s possibility to compile the scripts, this can help with increasing the speed of the website.

Refine your links

The use of links within SEO are still relevant today and how external and internal links continue to have a major influence on how well your site ranks. Review your links that are generated by your site and check whether they can be improved to work correctly. Be sure to check whether you have any broken links and fix them, use internal exact match anchor text within your website (but don’t spam it) and if your brand name is ever mentioned on the web, make sure they link to you to help increase your site’s authority.

Optimize your on-page

Even getting some of the basic optimization techniques right can make a massive impact on your website ranking. Optimize for the right keywords and searches and you’ll see a great improvement in your visibility. For best practice, ensure that you use unique and creative titles and meta descriptions that look natural but are optimized for your website. You can also use structured data which is language which can be implemented onto your website to help search engines to read your pages better and understand what they’re about more clearly.

Conclusion

Google is continuing to make efforts that prevent webmasters from being cunning with their optimization techniques and to think long and hard about their user. They want to provide results for users that will be informative and relevant to what they’re looking for. This means that you need to be patient with your SEO strategy as it won’t be an overnight success.

The strategies outlined here should be considered a foundation for making your website visible in search engines, but they will require long term investment to ensure you can maintain rankings.

Author Bio

Jamie Costello is a freelance marketing writer based in Manchester, UK. Writing regularly on topics to do with digital marketing in particular, he uses his knowledge from past education and employment to help conduct his articles. Jamie has had the benefit of working alongside various companies specializing in SEO Manchester-based to write this particular article and express his knowledge on the topic.