The Ultimate Guide to Google Organic Ranking

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Google organic ranking is a crucial aspect of online marketing, and understanding how it works can make a huge difference in your website's visibility. According to Google's algorithm, relevance is one of the key factors in determining organic ranking.

To increase your website's relevance, you need to create high-quality, engaging, and informative content that resonates with your target audience. This means using keywords strategically, but not overdoing it, as Google frowns upon keyword stuffing.

Google also takes into account user experience when ranking websites. This means that your website should be mobile-friendly, have fast loading speeds, and be easy to navigate. A slow website can lead to a high bounce rate, which can negatively impact your organic ranking.

In fact, Google's algorithm favors websites that have a high engagement rate, which can be measured by metrics such as time on site and pages per session.

Why Is Important?

Organic search is king, and for good reason. It's owned, meaning you control every aspect, and it's free, meaning traffic doesn't stop just because you stop paying.

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Growing your organic footprint has a few significant advantages. You can target specific user groups in detail, creating content that speaks to people interested in different products or features.

Organic traffic is the perfect complement to paid ads, because you can easily retarget users based on website behavior. For example, you can show a relevant ad to people who viewed a specific page on your site.

Creating content for organic search will almost always require an upfront investment, but unlike ads, this investment is a one-time expense that can keep driving traffic for months.

Here are the benefits of organic search in more detail:

  • Targeting specific user groups in detail
  • Improving your PPC (pay-per-click) through retargeting
  • Saving money overall with a one-time investment

Achieving top results in search engine results pages (SERPs) is becoming increasingly difficult, due to strong competition and frequent algorithm changes.

Improving Google Organic Ranking

Improving the quality of your webpage's content is essential for boosting its rankings in search engines. If your content is not well-written, accurate, and useful for your audience, you will have a hard time ranking.

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To improve content quality, give users what they want by aligning with the search intent. For example, if your keyword is "get payday loan", your webpage should include a form or contact number to help apply for a loan.

Organizing your page in a logical, hierarchical structure with useful headings and clear transitions between topics can improve readability. This makes your page content more readable while also helping search engines better understand the structure of your pages.

A visually appealing design and incorporating multimedia like images, charts, or videos can make your webpage more engaging for visitors.

Here are some key on-page SEO elements to focus on:

* Optimize title tags and headings to include keywordsUse meta descriptions to draw attention and include keywordsAdd ALT tags to images to help search engines understand their content

By focusing on these elements, you can improve your webpage's content quality and increase its chances of ranking higher in search results.

Creates Brand Awareness

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Ranking highly in organic search results greatly increases brand visibility and awareness. This is because your website shows up when search engine users search keywords related to your business.

Your brand becomes familiar to potential customers as they see you ranking highly across different terms. Even if they don’t click initially, this repetition plants your brand name in consumers’ minds.

So, wherever they are in the buying journey, they’ll remember your brand and consider your products or services. This brand recall is immensely valuable.

Here are some key benefits of creating brand awareness through organic search results:

  • Affordable: Creating brand awareness through organic search results is essentially free
  • Targeted: Organic traffic often attracts visitors who are specifically looking for the types of products/services and content you provide
  • Long-term sustainability: Organic traffic can provide a steady stream of visitors over time as long as your content remains relevant and optimized
  • Scalability: You can increase organic traffic with an SEO and content marketing strategy

Affordable Lead Generation

Organic SEO is a cost-effective way to generate leads, with costs primarily being internal labor. This means you can drive leads without breaking the bank.

Unlike paid search ads, organic rankings offer compounding returns on your initial SEO investment. Once you start ranking, your website continues to attract traffic and leads for months or years with minimal additional expense.

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Organic SEO leads to sustainable growth for a business over the long-term, delivering ongoing results. This is in contrast to paid ads, which stop driving traffic once the spending stops.

Some advantages of organic traffic include affordability, targeted traffic, relationship building, long-term sustainability, and scalability. Organic traffic can provide a steady stream of visitors over time if your content remains relevant and optimized.

Here are some benefits of affordable lead generation through organic SEO:

  • Affordability: Organic traffic is free
  • Targeted traffic: Organic traffic often attracts visitors who are specifically looking for the types of products/services and content you provide
  • Relationship building: Organic traffic drives people to your content, and they may continue to engage with your brand if they like what they see
  • Long-term sustainability: Organic traffic can provide a steady stream of visitors over time as long as your content remains relevant and optimized
  • Scalability: You can increase organic traffic with an SEO and content marketing strategy

Improve Webpage Quality

Improving webpage quality is crucial for boosting your Google organic ranking. Quality content is essential for ranking higher in search engines, and it's not just about writing well, it's also about making your page content more readable and visually appealing.

To improve readability, organize your page in a logical, hierarchical structure with useful headings and clear transitions between topics. This makes your page content more readable while also helping search engines better understand the structure of your pages.

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Invest in a visually appealing design and incorporate multimedia like images, charts, or videos to complement your text. This makes your webpage more engaging for visitors and improves your chances of ranking higher.

Here are some key things to focus on to improve the quality of your webpage's content:

• Give users what they want (align with the search intent)

• Improve readability by organizing your page in a logical structure

• Invest in a visually appealing design and incorporate multimedia

By doing so, you'll improve your chances of ranking higher in search results. Remember, quality content is the foundation of a successful SEO strategy.

On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization is the foundation of Google organic ranking. To start, examine your website's existing content and look for opportunities to better optimize for your target keywords. Use a Chrome SEO extension like SEO Quake to break out the page's on-page elements into an easy-to-scan format.

One key area to focus on is images - make sure to add ALT tags to each image, as they allow search engines to understand what the picture is about. This is especially important for images with missing ALT tags, like the 23 images on the page mentioned earlier.

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Optimize your page's main headers, including the title, H1, H2s, and so on, to include your target keyword. This will help search engines understand the relevance of your content. You can also use SEO Quake to compare your page with competing pages and identify areas for improvement.

Here's a quick checklist to get you started:

By following these simple steps, you'll be well on your way to improving your Google organic ranking and driving more traffic to your website.

Technical Optimization

Technical Optimization is crucial for organic SEO. To get a feel for how well your website performs in terms of technical SEO, conduct a full technical audit using tools like Semrush's Site Audit tool. Enter your website URL, click "Start Audit", and wait for the tool to scan your website and generate a comprehensive report.

A high "Site Health" score indicates that your website is generally in good health from a technical SEO standpoint. If your score is low, it's because your site has a lot of technical SEO issues, which you can see by going to the "Issues" tab.

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To fix technical issues, start by addressing errors first, as they're the most severe issues affecting your site. For each identified issue, the tool offers advice on how to fix it. You can also use tools like Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to keep track of your SEO rankings and identify areas for improvement.

Here are some common technical issues to look out for:

  • Broken images
  • Redirect chains and loops
  • Broken internal links
  • Duplicate meta descriptions

By fixing these technical issues, you can improve your website's crawlability, indexability, and overall visibility in search engines.

Use Schema.org Markup

Implementing Schema.org markup on your website can have a significant impact on how your content shows up in search engine results pages (SERPs). Over the years, on-page SEO practices have remained largely the same, which means that Schema.org markup is still a valuable tool for improving your site's visibility.

Using Schema.org markup, especially for published and modified dates, has been shown to improve content crawl and recrawl rates. This means that search engines are able to find and index your content more efficiently.

Optimize for Mobile and Execute Technical

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To optimize for mobile and execute technical SEO, your website needs to be mobile-responsive and offer a seamless user experience on smartphones and tablets. This includes optimizing images and other media for faster loading on mobile devices.

You can test your website's mobile-friendliness using tools like Google's Lighthouse testing tool. If your website isn't mobile-friendly, it's essential to work with strong web developers to implement best practices for technical search engine optimization.

Some key technical SEO practices include compressing images, minimizing HTTP requests, and enabling browser caching. You should also use a clean and organized URL structure that is easy for both users and search engines to navigate.

Implementing schema markup can also enhance rich snippets and improve the visibility of your content in search results. To get a feel for how well your website performs in terms of technical SEO, consider conducting a full technical audit using tools like Semrush's Site Audit tool.

Here are some key things to check during a technical SEO audit:

  • Site speed
  • Mobile-friendliness
  • Crawling and indexing
  • Broken links and images
  • Redirect chains and loops
  • Duplicate meta descriptions

By addressing these technical issues, you can improve your website's crawlability and indexability, and ultimately boost your organic search engine rankings.

SEO Strategy and Planning

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Creating an effective SEO strategy involves several key tactics, including auditing and benchmarking your current site performance. This involves conducting a comprehensive site audit to identify technical SEO issues and benchmarking existing metrics to establish baseline traffic, keyword rankings, and conversion rates.

To develop a comprehensive SEO strategy, you should also conduct a competitor analysis, identifying competitors by assessing which websites rank for your target keywords. Analyze their content, including structure, depth, and keyword usage on high-ranking pages, and use tools to discover where competitors are obtaining quality backlinks.

When developing your SEO strategy, it's also important to focus on finding low-competition keywords that align with user intent and create targeted content around them. Use a combination of keyword research tools, such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs, and AnswerThePublic, to build a comprehensive keyword list and develop topic clusters by creating pillar pages connected to detailed subtopic content.

Here are some key metrics to focus on when finding relevant keywords:

  • Search intent: What users are hoping to achieve when they perform a search for that term
  • Search volume: The average number of monthly searches for the keyword
  • Personal Keyword Difficulty (PKD %): The estimated ranking difficulty for that keyword on a scale of 0 to 100 for your specific domain

By focusing on these metrics and using tools like Semrush's Keyword Magic Tool, you can find relevant keywords and target them with the right type of content to satisfy the searcher's intent.

Understanding Serp

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Understanding SERP is crucial for any SEO strategy. It's only 50% effective if you neglect the clues Google gives you regarding what it wants to see.

Google gives you plenty of clues on what it wants to see through the search engine result page. If you look at the search engine result page for your keyword, you'll see a featured snippet at the top, often easier to rank for than the true position 1.

The existence of different types of search queries can reduce the visibility of actual pages. However, it can also provide an opportunity for businesses not already on page one to better optimize around a search term.

Take "collaborative marketing" as an example - while it's not the best topic for an image search, there is a lot of traffic to be won for images that show up in the image section of Google.

Investigating how others structured their content to be featured in the featured snippet can be a great learning experience. This can help you create content that's optimized for search engine results.

Set Optimization Strategy

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Setting an SEO optimization strategy is crucial for driving organic traffic to your website. To create an effective strategy, you need to conduct a comprehensive site audit to identify technical SEO issues, such as broken links and slow page speeds.

Audit and Benchmark Current Site Performance involves using tools like Google Analytics, Search Console, and SEO software to evaluate your website's strengths, weaknesses, and existing metrics.

To establish a baseline, benchmark existing traffic, keyword rankings, and conversion rates using tools like Google Analytics and Search Console.

A content inventory is also essential to evaluate which pages perform well and identify those needing updates or consolidation.

Competitor analysis is a key part of SEO strategy development. Identify competitors by assessing which websites rank for your target keywords and analyze their content, including structure, depth, and keyword usage.

Use tools like Semrush's Keyword Magic Tool to discover where competitors are obtaining quality backlinks and uncover link-building opportunities.

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Pinpoint topics or keywords your competitors cover that you haven't addressed, and create unique content to fill those gaps.

Keyword research and intent mapping are critical components of an SEO strategy. Use a combination of keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs, and AnswerThePublic to build a comprehensive keyword list.

Focus on finding low-competition keywords that align with user intent and create targeted content around them.

Develop topic clusters by creating pillar pages connected to detailed subtopic content to improve site structure and authority on key topics.

Here's a quick rundown of the key tactics to consider when developing an SEO strategy:

By following these key tactics, you'll be well on your way to developing an effective SEO strategy that drives organic traffic to your website.

External Linking

External linking is a crucial aspect of SEO, and studies confirm its importance in organic search. Google hasn't confirmed link quantity as a ranking factor, but backlinks are still a key element.

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There are many link building tactics, but one strategy that could be a good fit is resource page link building. This involves finding pages that list relevant marketing resources and asking them to include your guide as well.

You can use the Content Explorer tool in Ahrefs to search for a topic and see other sites that have written about it. This can help you find pages where "marketing resources" is in the title.

Alternatively, you can use search operators like "allintitle:marketing resources" or "allinurl:marketing resources" to find page titles and URLs that include these keywords.

Once you have a list of candidates, you can use a tool like Hunter to find their emails and craft a message asking them to include you on their page.

Do It Yourself or Hire a Professional?

If you have the time and expertise to execute organic SEO strategies yourself, DIY SEO is a viable option.

Having the time and expertise to do SEO yourself is crucial for success.

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However, hiring a professional SEO expert or agency is your best choice if you don't have the time or expertise.

Professionals bring a depth of knowledge and experience, having worked with diverse websites and industries.

They can work with you to achieve your SEO goals and grow your online presence.

But, as the saying goes, "it won't happen from day one" - SEO is a process that takes time and effort.

Track Your Performance

Tracking your performance is crucial when it comes to Google organic ranking. You need to see how well your website is doing in Google Search Console, a free tool that provides data on clicks, impressions, average position, queries, and click-through rate (CTR).

Google Search Console is a must-have tool for anyone engaged in SEO, whether you're doing it yourself or working with a professional. It's free, and it's an essential part of tracking your progress.

A good metric to look at is clicks. You want to see an upward trend in clicks, which suggests that your SEO strategies are effectively improving your rankings and generating more traffic.

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Here are some key metrics to track in Google Search Console:

  • Clicks: How many people click on your site from search results
  • Impressions: How often your site appears in search results
  • Average position: What is the average position of your site in search results
  • Queries: Which search queries show your site
  • Click-through rate (CTR): How often people click through to your site for those queries

You can also use Position Tracking to monitor your keyword rankings, which can indicate that more organic traffic is soon to come. This is especially useful when making technical improvements, doing keyword research, creating content, and building links.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between organic rankings and Google Ads?

Organic rankings are free and based on relevance, while Google Ads require a paid ad budget to secure a top spot in search results

Patricia Dach

Junior Copy Editor

Patricia Dach is a meticulous and detail-oriented Copy Editor with a passion for refining written content. With a keen eye for grammar and syntax, she ensures that articles are polished and error-free. Her expertise spans a range of topics, from technology to lifestyle, and she is well-versed in various style guides.

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