How do I get on page one of Google for a specific keyword?
Getting on page one is everyone’s goal. You are not alone, which means you will have a lot of competitors.
If you have the budget, the time, and the skills, you might be able to do it.
This is not a question you can answer with just a few words; you could write a book on this. However, I will try a series of posts that can help you answer your question.
- high-quality content
- website structure
- keyword strategy
- in-page SEO
- internal linking
- external linking
- social media
- social media strategy
- domain name with keywords strategy
- server location
- domains and why country code is better than others
There’s no magical formula for ranking on the first page. Still, Google heavily favors websites with high-quality content developed around relevant keywords of your business and a good website structure.
Let’s play a game
Imagine you have competitors:
- with similar content to yours
- the same structure of the website
- same products
- number of pages similar to yours
- similar backlinks power
Somehow, they rank better on Google than your website. Why? If one of the factors of the website is very well done, this will make them more powerful in the eyes of Google.
Factors that might influence google ranking
Server Location
Setup the server location closer to customers;
Domain Names
Their domain names are older than yours (it matters, as they will build trust and history with Google). The older the domain, the better (valid only if the owner does not change).
Website Structure
The website structure. Website structure is one of the most critical aspects of your website. You should invest a lot of time to build the design of your website and add relevant content.
SEO strategies. So there is the content structure as pages and categories, and another structure inside the page itself. The content structure inside your page is as important as the rest. The title, description, and keyword relevancy from both are distributed inside your website’s first text. The similar words from the rest of the page are of the same importance as everything else.
Website internal linking
Internal linking refers to links/buttons that get you from page to page (the menu itself and the rest of the links within the content). The links from promos, sliders, the “buy now,” “add to cart,” and so on must be straightforward, easy to spot (meaning, it must have distances around them, easy to click, minimum 48px height), and a different color than the standard text or background.
Website external linking
This one is important to consider, and you should also be very careful with it. External linking are links to external websites within your page. Usually, you send your user complete information about something if you link to an external website within your content.
But, if that website is not good in the eyes of Google (if it’s DA – domain authority or PA- page authority is low), it might mean that the content provided by them has no value whatsoever. Doing this, you create a power exchange between your page and theirs, and if your page lowers in value, you should expect a power drop from Google rankings.
In worst cases, you can be unindexed from Google if that page/domain is on a blacklist for many reasons (it might be a spam website or contain a hack or other things). You should not have words on your website that link to a different domain, especially if it’s a domain where there are age restrictions applied.
Sitemap
They might have a simple sitemap better than yours. A sitemap is the structure of links that you send to Google to index. However, a wrong-built sitemap could hurt your ranking as well.
Backlinks
Your competitors might have more backlinks than you. What is a backlink? It is an “external link” we discussed earlier in this article. It’s a link on other sites pointing to your website.
The value of it in the eyes of Google is like this: The more you have, the more relevant you might be. You only need backlinks from powerful websites with a high DA – domain authority or PA-page authority. The lower value ones might hurt your domain power.
Social Media presence
And one of the most important: Social Media presence. I will write a complete series of posts about this, but here is the short version. The more people talk about your business on other social platforms, the better your Brand.
For example, you should have 1 Facebook Page where the goal is to gather many followers, get them active on your page, like posts, and comment on your information distributed there. This will generate high traffic to your website if done right. Some businesses get almost 50% of their traffic only from Social media activity.
Content Value
I believe you formed an idea of what your elements might be missing from your site. So now, let’s talk about the value you have in your website.
Would you consider that the pieces of information you have on your website are top-notch? If not, why would you expect Google to view you as necessary in the field? Google only ranks up what he considers to be helpful to the users.
I made an entire series of posts about content quality and how you should build them, using SEO in mind and a good structure for it.
Tips and tricks
There are, however, other tips and tricks that you could do to rank for specific keywords. At first, you could buy a domain name with the exact keyword. For example, if you want to rank for web hosting, you should buy web-hosting.com or your country domain. It .ca .ro etc., Google priorities the parts based on country. If you are in Romania, the priorities for website ranking will fall on the domains with the .ro extension. That’s another trick you could use to target specific countries.
You could build Facebook pages or other social media pages, with the name variations of your target keywords (followed by your brand name, such as WordPress Website – Webackit, this will create a keyword “WordPress website” that will use the power of that platform to rank in Google). Then, you could use that page to drive traffic to your website and build authority on the keyword itself.
For other ideas, check out the blog section related to SEO strategies.