03 Mar
A few years back, writing a 500 words post with a little bit keyword research & putting few images was enough to improve SE ranking on Google. I remember I wrote similar posts regarding Linux Administration with few SEO tweaks and after a couple of weeks, those pages started to rank on first page. However, things have changed quite a lot now. It has become the hardest thing to rank on the first page of Google after you start a blog.
Why SE(search engine) Ranking is so hard?
Because there are over 600 Million blogs in the world. That is more than half a Billion & furthermore, if we go more deeper, about 2.75 Million blog posts are published every day. Aren’t these stats amazing? Another point to be noted here, I was just sharing the stats of blogs not all the websites.
So what do you think? Is it an easy job to outrank such a huge volume of blogs?
If you ask my honest opinion, the answer is yes. But the blog’s SEO demands a certain number of changes, what are those?
Let’s discuss!
1. What type of KeyWords should we use for quickest SE Ranking?
It is the first & most important step to improve Search Engine Optimization on Google. With the help of right keywords, it’s easy to increase organic traffic on website. There are a number of free Keyword Research Tools available to find the right keywords. Before that, let’s talk about an important concept known as Keyword Difficulty.
In simple words, Keyword Difficulty is calculated on the terms of it’s search volume. Higher the search volume means higher the keyword difficulty. Let me explain it with an example.
For instance, “web hosting” is a keyword here and using SemRush, a great SEO tool, the difficulty of this keyword is 75.27 and literally, that’s way too hard. For a beginner, using such words is madness because neither you can outrank the competitors nor you’ll get traffic. It may take years to rank for such keywords only if you keep updating your site with good content.
However, after a little research I found a keyword with a low competition & zero keyword difficulty. “best web hosting services for small business” has a zero difficulty and according to Google’s Keyword Planner, it’s competition is low.
You see there, no difficulty. I’ve also checked the same keyword using ahrefs and found the same results. You must be thinking about the search volume is too low, it’s completely understood. But getting your site ranked on low volume is better than dying it with hard keywords. Do you agree?
Focusing on low competition keywords is the secret ingredient to SEO success — Kimberly Cooper
Such keywords are known as “Long Tail Keywords” & therefore, the first change that you need to improve SE ranking is to use low competition, zero difficulty long tail keywords. You’ll see the difference in few weeks, honestly!
2. How Long my blog post should be for better SE ranking?
The length of a blog post matters a lot now from SEO point of view. But it does not mean that only long form posts with 5000 words will only rank on Google. If there is no quality in it, writing content in bulk will be of no value. Though the trend has been changed and Google likes long posts but however, after a little bit research, we’ve found that such posts that are 2000-2500 words long rank higher on search engines.
Related:
Submit Your Website to Google Using Search Console
It’s not at all about just stuffing keywords in a post. Honestly there are millions of posts that are just 1000 words long but rank on the first page. So I was searching over the analysis on the length of a good quality blog post and according to Buffer, the ideal length ranges from 2000 to 2500 words.
Longer posts usually perform better on every level. Neil Patel
On the other hand, bloggers write posts with more content to outrank their competitors. For instance, here’s a post from Adam’s blog about best podcasting hosting sites & it’s a 9000 words long post. Another one from one of my favorite bloggers, Ryan’s blog post about how to start a blog ranks on 1st page. Did you see the length of the guide? It’s a 25000 words long post, I must say it’s a complete ebook on blogging.
So the conclusion is, it totally depends on your content but an ideal post is 2500 words long. But you can write more lengthy posts to beat competitors in your niche. Finally, remember and don’t forget about one thing is “quality”. A quality content plays the role of a king in SE ranking.
3. Focus on Google Voice Search, it's the Top Trend in 2020
Since October 2016, traffic coming from smart phones has overtaken desktop computers. That means more people use their mobile devices to search on popular apps. Even little kids use voice search to find their favorite cartoons. Therefore, it is one of the key points in search engine optimization to optimize our site for google search.
Long tail keywords can help us a lot here. By using Google search, people search mostly by long phrases and not via short terms. Hence voice search is now an important factor and you can use these best tips by Robert to improve the website for voice search.
4. Want to Improve SE Ranking on Google? Use Google's Tools
Undoubtedly, SEO starts from Google. Honestly there is no match on internet for the Google’s free tools for SEO. Either you are a beginner or a professional, if you are worried how to get your website to rank higher on google, the search giant walks you through that.
Related:
How to Enable Google Search Console Data in Google Analytics
Keyword Planner is a free keyword research tool, use Google Trends to find what people are looking for? Furthermore, Google Search Console is ultimately the best tool to start the SEO journey of your site. There are a couple of steps to verify your website on Google. A verified site gets the trust score & that phenomenon boost the rankings.These are very easy and simple steps and you can go through the above tutorials to start with.
5. Make sure the site is Mobile Friendly
According to TechJury, 40% of people search only on a smartphone. It’s increasing on a daily basis. There are over 4 billion unique mobile internet users as of October 2019. Now you can guess, it’s mandatory to have a mobile friendly website. Such websites with optimized theme and a perfect mobile design are ranked higher.
The first step is too choose a mobile friendly WordPress theme. Check their demos on your own mobile device to see how they look.
Popular search engines have a mobile friendliness test
Therefore, after publishing a post, check if it is mobile friendly if you are serious to boost SEO ranking on Google. Any pages with errors will be shown in Mobile usability.
Similarly in Bing, at the right side, mobile friendliness test is available under Diagnostics and Tools.
6. Install a Free SSL Certificate
Almost every popular web hosting company offers a free SSL certificate. Because those certificates are powered by a free and open authority known as Let’s Encrypt. Google will penalise a website immediately if they have not changed to https which is the secure protocol. The ultimate results will be a loss in rankings if the site is not secure.
Security is the key point in search engine rankings. Search any query on google, you’ll see all the results on the first page with SSL. Finally, my recommended hosting platforms like Bluehost and SiteGround offer a free SSL certificate. So want higher rankings? Get secured.
7. Say No to Duplicate Content
What is a duplicate content? Well Google answers itself:
Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin.
It’s not at all a good practice to write multiple posts or launch more domains with the same content. Google’s search algorithms are super intelligent and once caught, you’ll get a penalty & an immediate drop in SE ranking. Therefore, you must avoid creating duplicate content.
Instead of wasting time on crafting duplicate content, focus on updating your current posts and pages. Because as long as you keep updating the posts, search engines will crawl & boost your site rankings. Use WP Last Modified plugin for WordPress that shows the recent update on a certain post.
8. Optimized images boost SE ranking
If you are using WordPress for your blog, install the Short Pixel Optimizer plugin. It is an image compression plugin to compress the images on your site. Not only that, it also compresses PDF documents on your blog. The ultimate result will a boost in site speed and SEO rankings.
Related:
Whatever images you’ll upload, Short Pixel plugin will automatically optimize, re-scale and re-size them. Additionally, never ever forget to add an Alt attribute & description of the images you upload. We ignore these steps thinking not very important from SE ranking aspect & that’s false.
Go to the Google Search Console and see your site’s performance by images.
Half of the impressions are from images because I put an alt attribute and a description of every image. So being a newbie blogger myself, I share what I learn.
9. These small things worth a lot
While writing a post on your blog, there are a certain number of small checks that mean a lot. In order to make that possible and not to miss any, Yoast is the best WordPress plugin for SEO. Its a freemium plugin that updates us about the SEO improvements. For instance;
- Internal & External links
- Meta tags & descriptions
- SEO title & it’s width
- Grammer & Readability
- Use of active voice
- Image alt attributes
- Slug
- Nofollowed & Dofollowed links
Related:
How to Install a WordPress plugin using 3 Methods
Yoast turns the red button to green as soon your post is ready for SEO. Popular bloggers use Yoast to improve SEO on Google. Other than that, you should focus on the user experience of your website. For example, add featured snippets, numbered or bulleted points and a contents table.
10. Finally a little talk on Off Page SEO ranking
All the 9 points we discussed above relate to on page SEO. You know there is a big difference between on page and off page SEO. While we talk about off page SEO, you’ll hear the following terms.
- Backlinks
- Domain Authority
- Blog comments
- Social sharing
Both on page and off page SEO technique play an equal role in SE ranking. But the bad news is, off page SEO is harder & needs a lot of efforts. Your site will never rank if there are no backlinks. Since the process takes a lot of time, therefore start collecting backlinks in the beginning.
The most legit & the greatest way to get backlinks is guest posting. Search high domain authority sites in your niche and start writing guest posts. Adam Enfroy wrote a complete guide on guest blogging and the results are unbelievable. Create social pages of your site on all the social media platforms & start sharing your content. At the end, find blogs similar to your niche and write valuable comments to get do-follow links, more do-follow backlinks means high rankings.
11. Wrapping Up
There is no secret that SEO is a way huge. More importantly, it’s the only way to get organic traffic. There are around 200 ranking factors of Google’s algorithms to rank websites. Your first step starts with keyword research & like I said, start with long tail keywords with low competition and volume. Google’s free SEO tools are the best tools for a beginner. Make your site more resilient with Google because it’s the platform you want your site to rank for.
Web hosting companies give away a free SSL certificate, install it on your domain to make it secure, Keep checking Google search console to find and fix any potential errors with any specific page. The console beautifully notifies about any page that is not mobile friendly. Either you write one, two or three posts in a week, whatever your frequency is, keep updating the content regularly because “Content is the King”.
Share in your network!
Leave a Comment
Hi, I am Faisal Rehman
Recent Posts
Best Web Hosting for Bloggers
14 Comments
Antoinette
This was amazing. So informative! Well written for a new blogger to learn.
Faisal Rehman
Thank you for your feedback!
Elaine
This was one of the most informative articles I have read on SEO on Google. I have saved it for future reference and am sharing it on my facebook page, Elaine EMG.
Faisal Rehman
That’s so nice of you Elanie.
Kathleen
Thanks for sharing this very informative post! I’m new to blogging and reading all these tips are really helpful especially since SEO seems so hard to learn.
Faisal Rehman
SEO is the most difficult part in our blogging journey, so learn it from scratch. You’ll need it a lottt 😀
Elizabeth Elkassih
Thank you for providing very thorough, but clearly explained, tips for improving SEO ranking of blogs. Well done.
Faisal Rehman
Thank you Eliza
Siggy
This was a very refreshing read and I totally agree on voice search, this becoming a normal thing. You have a very informative blog, I will be back for more
Hayden
Great post! There’s a ton of stuff that’s helpful on here!
Taylor oldman
There is a ton of valuable information on this post. I will be installing the short pixel optimizer plugin on my blog. Thanks for all the tips especially the one on keyword difficulty.
Faisal Rehman
You’re welcome Taylor. Yeah make sure to choose keywords with low difficulty for easy rankings.
Nicole
So helpful thank you! I really need to work on this!
Faisal Rehman
Sure, keep going!