9 Steps to Improve Your Google Ranking Today

So, you want to improve your Google ranking, but it’s taking longer than you hoped. While traditional SEO methods are an excellent way to improve your overall website ranking, they can take some time to show results. So how can you improve your Google ranking quickly? There is a shortcut to help you improve your Google ranking today. The best part? It’s free! It will only take a few minutes of your time and effort. This article will provide you with the nine steps to improve your Google ranking quickly using Google Analytics. It’s a step-by-step guide to help anyone who knows how to use Google Analytics quickly improve a page’s ranking on their site. Ready? Let’s get started!

How to Rank Higher on Google Today

Before we get into the steps to help you improve your Google rank, first let’s summarize what you will need to do. Luckily, these steps should only take about ten minutes max. The key is to find a keyword or phrase that you are already ranking for, but not that high. Once you find the keyword you are ranking for, find the pages on your website that are utilizing that keyword. Then, you can optimize that page or pages for that keyword – and watch your ranking improve for that page!

This process works quickly because there is no need to perform new keyword research, or to check your competition. You can take work your website is already doing for you and simply capitalize on it to earn a higher search ranking on Google. Next, we’ll tell you the nine steps for how improve your Google search ranking.

Step 1: Where Do I Rank on Google?

The first step is to find the keyword or phrase that you are already ranking for, but want to improve. Open Google Analytics, and find your “Queries” report. You can find it by going to Acquisition > Search Console > Queries. This report will tell you the keywords and phrases you rank for; the number of times you appear in Google, which are called impressions; the number of times your pages have been visited from these phrases, or clicks; and how high you rank for the phrase. This will help you narrow down what keyword or phrase you want to optimize for.

Step 2: Set an Advanced Filter

The key is to look for phrases that you already rank for, but that you would like to rank even higher for. How do you find these phrases? The answer is an advanced filter. First, click “advanced.” Then, set “average position” to greater than 10. Finally, click apply. In this scenario, you will find your pages that are showing up on page two of the search engine results page. Ideally, this trick will help you move those web pages of your site up to page one!

Step 3: Sort the Report by Rankings

Next, click the column header “Average Position” to sort the report. You will need to click it twice so you can see the 11s at the top.

Here’s a tip: you can save your filtered, sorted Queries as a shortcut in Google Analytics. Next time, they will be even easier to find. Simply tap the “Shortcut” link at the top of the report, name it, and then click OK. Then, the report will always be seen in the left navigation side of Google Analytics.

Step 4: Choose the Phrase You Want to Rank Higher For 

Your report might include some random keywords and phrases. Ignore those. It’s normal for a website to rank for some unrelated phrases. Also, skip any keywords that include your brand name. You want to rank and obtain traffic from keywords that are non-branded. Instead, look for keywords or phrases that will ideally find you new business. For example, if you are a veterinarian in Chicago, you will want to rank for “emergency veterinarian Chicago.”

Step 5: Confirm Your Ranking

Next, you need to confirm your ranking for your chosen keyword. You can do this by searching the word or phrase on Google. You might see your page ranking higher or lower than the report from Google Analytics suggests. There are several reasons this could be the case:

• You may have more than one page on your website that ranks for that word or phrase;
• Your site might rank in image search results;
• It might rank differently today than it did in the average ranking in across the date range in your reports; and
• Your search results might be personalized for you based on a few factors, like your location or browsing history.

If you encounter this issue, log out of your Google account. Or, use the “private” or “incognito” setting in your web browser. You can even try using a web browser you don’t typically use to search.

Hopefully, however, you can confirm that your website is ranking for that keyword or phrase right about where you thought based on your Google Analytics report.

Step 6: See How the Keyword is Used on the Web Page

Now, you need to check how the keyword is used on the web page. Does the keyword show up in the right places? (You can search for the keyword b using control + F or command + F on a Mac.) Now you can check the following:

• Does the keyword or phrase show up on the page?
• Does it appear all together, or broken up?
• Where does the keyword appear? Is it in the title, header, and the body text?
• How many times is it used?

If the phrase isn’t in the title, header, and body text, then the page has not yet been optimized. This means the Google ranking happened on accident. This means it’s time for the next step, optimizing the page.

However, you might want to check that the page isn’t already ranking for a different keyword or phrase. If you optimize it for a new phrase, you might lose out on ranking for the keyword that the page was already optimized for. To make sure that doesn’t happen, go back to your Queries report and look for any other phrases that appear often on the page. Confirm any possible keyword rankings in Google, or enter the page address into SEMRush. It can tell you all the words any individual web page ranks for, and in what position.

Step 7: Optimize the Web Page for the Keyword 

The next step is to optimize the web page for your chosen keyword as well as possible. To do so, you will want to use some SEO best practices:

• Make sure to use the keyword once in the page title. Your page title is the title tag, which doesn’t actually show up on the page itself. However, it’s still important for SEO purposes.
• Use the keyword again in the header. Your header is the H1 tag, which is typically the headline of the page.
• Re-use the keyword a few times in the content of the page. For example, if your page is about 1,500 words, then four to six times is optimal.
• Make sure to remove any broken links from the page and add any quality internal or external links from high authority pages, if you can.

Step 8: Improve the Quality of the Page

One often overlooked aspect to search engine optimization is the quality of the web page itself. Search engines love a high-quality web page. So if you are attempting to improve your page’s ranking, it’s important to create the best possible content on that page. Add as much detail, examples, links, and anything else you can think of to make the best possible page on the internet on that topic. If you are really feeling motivated, create an infographic to add to the page. And don’t forget the user experience – how does the page work on a mobile device? All of these factors can affect your search engine rankings. This is how you will really rank higher, rather than just loading the page with keywords.

Step 9: Check Your Rankings in a Week

The final step is to wait a few days to a week and check your rankings. Is your page ranking higher for that keyword? Fantastic! You can repeat these steps with any other keywords or phrases you are already ranking for, just not as high as you’d like. Improving Google rankings is a constant and ongoing effort. It can take a lot of time to rank higher for several web pages. But the best part is, you can do these steps over and over for various pages of your site and see an overall improvement.

Improve Your Google Ranking with SEO Design Chicago

Hopefully, this article taught you some easy steps to improve your Google ranking. If you still need help, or are confused about how to improve your Google search results, contact us at SEO Design Chicago today! Our professionals can help you rank higher with our expert search engine optimization tips and tricks. Whether you are a small business or an e-commerce site, we can help you draw more organic traffic and rank higher on local search.

 

FAQs about Improving your Google Rankings

• How does Google rank No. 1?
• Can you pay Google to rank higher?
• Does Google traffic increase ranking?
• How does Google choose who ranks the highest?
• How to rank higher on Google organically?