Do you want to see your website on the first page when people search for a specific term? Do you have a new keyword that you would like to use? Well, you will need to prepare yourself, it will not be easy (unless you are The New York Times or Wikipedia). Ranking for a keyword in organic search is a process that needs to be repeated. You will not get the results right away, especially if your website is new, but if you take SEO and marketing seriously, you might start making wonderful progress, like better ranking, higher sales, and more traffic to your site. Here are five steps that you can take to rank for a keyword in Google:
Contents
Step 01: Do your initial keyword research
Source: Medium
You might think that you know what keyword you should target, however, you should double-check your instincts. You could use several keyword tools to get a sense of the keyword search volume, as well as what your competitors are using before actually choosing the keyword. You should consider:
- Choosing a keyword with good volume, but not too much volume – generally, you will not want to target keywords that are not used in searches. For example, there are usually twice as much Google searches for “best-paid jobs” then there are “best-paid careers”. However, you should not choose keywords that have the highest difficulty or volume. You will, of course, not be able to rank for “coffee shop”, unless you really are a coffee shop.
- Choosing a keyword that is relevant to your business model – you will be more successful in ranking your site if the term is connected and relevant to your business and website. For example, a catering business might want to target “how to cook for a business event”, but “how to cook rice” is not relevant to their audience or to them.
You should make a list of keywords and their variations. This list will be helpful when optimizing or writing content later.
Step 02: Check out the competition
Source: Serped.com
Once you have chosen a keyword, search for it on Google and other search engines to see what your competitors are doing. You should pay attention to:
- The URLs and domains – how many of them will be an exact match to the domain? Do the top 10 URLs include the keywords?
- The titles – how do the titles incorporate the keyword?
- The business type that is ranking – are they big brands or smaller companies?
In this step, you are looking for ways to make your website stand out from the crowd.
Step 03: Consider the intent
Source: Fstoppers
It will be easier to assess the intent of the person searching if your keyword is more specific. Consider the keywords below and try to guess the intent of each word alone:
- glasses
- sunglasses
- discount eyeglasses frames
- discount eyeglasses frames for kids
You should ask yourself, what content best serves the keyword? From the first term, you cannot really know if the person is looking for drinking glasses, glass as the material, or eyeglasses. Hence, you should think carefully about your choice.
Step 04: Conceptualize the content
Source: Search Engine Land
Next, you will need to create a plan for the content that will rank your chosen keyword. There are many ways that you can rank a keyword and these include: an article, blog post, a product page, directory or index links, a video, or an infographic. You can check this website for more information on the ways you can.
Step 05: Execute
Source: Wbcom Designs
This step is where you will actually execute your plan. Keep in mind that you should not rush through any steps since it is important to do all the things that are mentioned above. Search engines are more and more looking for content that is high-quality so that it can benefit the searcher, hence take your time and do everything accordingly.
Conclusion
These five steps will help you with boosting your ranking on the search engines, hence, do not waste any more time and start planning the perfect strategy.
