5 Tips To Improve and Maintain Your Position in SERPs

Peter Bray
6/15/2022

To improve your brand's online visibility, you need to rank high on search engines, but for that, there are certain factors to keep in mind. Learn how to boost your ranking in SERPs. 

According to a study by BrightEdge, 68% of online experiences start with search engines. This makes it paramount for organizations to work on their SEO strategies. If your business is looking to improve its reach online, the first step is to climb higher on search engine result pages and maintain that ranking.

Most organizations are under the impression that stuffing their web pages and content with keywords is the best way to rank on SERP. While this was a successful trend, this strategy can be detrimental considering the existing algorithm that Google and other search engines use. Experts are advising organizations to steer clear of this and try other strategies.

Invest in an SEO agency to support your company’s goals online.

5 Tips To Boost Your Ranking

According to a study, over 25% of users click the top-ranking result on Google. This means there is a much better chance of converting your target audience if you’re ranking as number one, compared to any other rank position on SERP.

Since ranking first brings along several other benefits associated with SEO, you should keep working on your ranking strategy and track website changes after implementation.

The following tips can help you improve and maintain your ranking:

  1. Improve domain authority
  2. Get backlinks
  3. Use the right keywords
  4. Optimize your website
  5. Keep your website updated

Improve Domain Authority

Google uses this metric to rate the reputation of a website. Domain authority plays a significant role in how search engines view your content. If you want to get to the top of the SERP for a keyword, it's helpful to watch your domain authority.

Several methods can improve the domain authority. It can primarily be increased through quality content. When your website creates high-value content, there is a chance that another website might link to you. Websites creating backlinks that redirect to your website is a sure-fire way of improving your domain authority and, in turn, your ranking in search results. 

Other steps that can work towards improving domain authority include:

  • Auditing your website to remove any bad or broken links
  • Improving the UI and UX of your existing website
  • Optimizing website structure
  • Improving internal links

This example shows the domain authority for Google. It has a strong domain authority with over 31 million keywords.

Moz
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A high domain authority helps your company compete against others in your industry. 

Get Backlinks

Backlinks are an integral part of how Google determines the value of your content. When a website has strong content, web admins from other websites naturally want to link to it, and content with more backlinks ranks better on search results. These backlinks can be from a blog you may have published on your website or to an exceptional service that your business offers.

Additional Reading: ‘5 Actionable Link-Building Tips for Your Business

Let's take the example of Wikipedia. Wikipedia currently has over 12.8 million backlinks. Although it is an open-source website, the sheer volume of backlinks ranks in the top 3 for most search queries related to research.

wikipedia
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Most publishers prefer free, high-quality content. If a business is willing to create good content for their site, they'll usually be willing to publish it. 

Publishers offer a great path to getting your backlinks. Even though this strategy takes much work, it's one of the most reliable ways to get backlinks from other websites.

While you may have to dedicate some time to finding the right publisher relevant to your business and negotiating with them on the type of content they want to publish, it can be fruitful for your SEO practices.

Use The Right Keywords

A strong ranking on search engines depends on how well you did the keyword research. Your keywords determine what phrases or words your business wants to rank on. Ever since keyword stuffing has become obsolete, businesses have to ensure that the keywords they are placing in their content are effective. 

Here are some ways you can optimize your keywords and improve their effectiveness:

  • Conduct keyword research for words or phrases that competitors in your business sector use
  • Use negative keywords to sift out any visitors that are not a part of your target audience
  • Focus on keyword placement in URLs, headings, and titles
  • Ensure that the keywords are placed naturally

Weak keyword research can drastically damage your ranking on SERP. You can optimize your content and website to its maximum potential, but your website will not rank on SERP without the right keywords

Check out more insights into SEO by checking out Visual Objects’ small business SEO report.

Optimize Your Website

While organizations primarily focus on solid content and backlinks to improve their ranking, the website's functionality takes a back seat. You can have all the right keywords with the best content, but if your page fails to rank, it is probably a matter of your website design and function.

Several aspects of your website can impact your ranking on search engines. These include:

  • Load Speed: As the name suggests, the time taken to load the entire page should be short. The shorter the time, the better your page will rank on SERP
  • Meta Descriptions: This is another section where keywords can be implemented. This refers to a summary of the webpage in HTML form. It is also displayed as the search snippet on SERP
  • Indexing: Improve the indexing of your website with robots.txt to help search engine spiders crawl your website effectively
  • Mobile compatibility: Ensure that your website is compatible with mobile devices. In an era where we use our smartphones more than our PCs, this is one of the most important aspects of website optimization
google mobile opt
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In the current era that we live in, mobile compatibility is paramount. Organizations need to ensure that their website is easy to access on mobile devices.

Keep Your Site Up-To-Date

Google prefers fresh content – it's no secret. So if you want to climb the results faster and go higher, make sure to regularly update your website with new, user-friendly content.

Remove old pages, refresh the content on some of them, or add entirely new pages with information on the latest products and services you offer. It may be good to keep coming up with new blogs and marketing materials to educate, inform, and delight visitors.

Experiment with new types of content. Google has been giving precedence to videos and podcasts, and long-form content always performs very well in search results. 

SEO Is Essential For Every Business

These days, businesses rely on digital more than traditional means to get their brand across. To do this, the first step is to get in front of many people through search engines. Search engines handle a lot of traffic – Google has 5.6 billion search queries every day. 

Ruling the search results is the best way to get in front of your audience, and strong SEO practices such as solid keyword research or optimized websites can put you there, showing your brand to the right people.

Additional Reading:

author

Peter Bray

CEO, Fluxgard
Peter Bray is an AI practitioner with a keen interest in competitive intelligence and web change monitoring. He is the CEO of Fluxguard.
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