Contrary to what others may say, there’s no fast-pass to achieving a #1 search ranking in Google. You can’t buy your way to the top. It requires a sound content marketing strategy, which is something we’re going to discuss in this post.
Don’t Chase Keywords
One of the biggest mistakes that webmasters make when creating content for their website is focusing the content around a specific keyword or phrase. There’s nothing wrong with trying to rank your page for a keyword, but this shouldn’t dictate the type of content you create or how you create it. In other words, create content for human visitors and not search engines. If you do this, then higher search rankings will soon follow.
Speed It Up
Don’t underestimate the impact speed has on your site’s search ranking. Google and Bing have both confirmed the use of site speed as a ranking signal. Fast-loading websites are viewed as being more favorable by search engines than slow-loading websites. Therefore, you should consider speed when creating content. Prior to uploading images to your site, for instance, try shrinking and optimizing them for a smaller file size. Smaller images means faster load times — and that could hep you achieve a higher search ranking.
Include Links
Some webmasters wrongfully assume that links shouldn’t be included in content, believing it sends visitors away from their site. This isn’t technically wrong: links can send visitors away from your site. However, that’s not always a bad thing. If another web page or website offers value, then maybe you should visitors to it. Google and other search engines will view your site as being more trustworthy if it contains contextual links. So, in your content, try to include links to other pages of your site as well as external links to outside pages.
Encourage Sharing
Social media is an excellent promotion and SEO tool for your website. To take advantage of it, though, you need to encourage visitors to share your content. You can do this by including some basic social sharing buttons on your site, preferably at the top or bottom of the content.
Run ‘Fetch as’ Tool
Finally, try running your website through Google’s “Fetch As” tool. Basically, this shows your site from Google’s perspective, revealing exactly how the search engine giant crawls your site. If there are any issues preventing it from crawling your site, you can find them with the Fetch As tool.
