7 Best Practices That Helped Me Rank #1 on Google

When I started my blog, I had no idea what I was doing. I needed to be more knowledgeable about SEO, backlinks, and everything else. Eventually, after months of trial and error, hard work, and learning through experience, I learned how to growth hack my way to the top of Google. And now, my blog ranks #1 for some highly competitive keywords!

I can't take all of the credit. Some of it is about luck and timing. However, there are some best practices I've learned over time that I can share that helped me achieve this success.

#1. Establish a Blogging Foundation

The first thing I started to think about was how I would lay out my blog - what topics I would cover and where I would post these. There are many website options out there, and I landed on WordPress because of its security and optimization and because it’s simple to upload content.

Additionally, I installed SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO to ensure my blog is optimized for search engines. I also uploaded my blog’s sitemap to connect it to different search engines so that they know to crawl my page.

The biggest thing for me was ensuring my blog was completely set up to be indexed by search engines - otherwise, my readers would have a rough time finding my content. It seems like a ton of steps, but once I had a solid blog foundation, the rest of the steps have been super easy to implement.

#2. Identify Your Niche

Everyone talks about niching down in order to become an expert on a specific topic, and the truth is, it gave me clarity and confidence to talk about what I was genuinely passionate about and helped me pave the way to where my blog is now. People go back and forth as to whether niching down is a good thing, but it has helped me tremendously. As a UX researcher, I knew that UX was something I was highly passionate about, and I wanted to share that knowledge with others and be seen as an authority on various UX topics.

Your niche doesn’t have to be super specific; mine was because I already knew what I loved and knew about, and that would be impactful to those who read my content. I have resonated with so many people by using my knowledge and passion for UX to not only converse with other authority figures in my niche but leverage that into speaking opportunities - things my readers and audience truly enjoy reading and can see I’m genuinely interested in as well.

Once I had that specific niche covered, I thought about what could coincide with that niche and what others in that field would be interested in reading about - the answer was other technology-related topics that could also give me internal links (foreshadowing for #5).

#3. Keyword Research

Keywords have been such an essential part of my blog journey - and starting out trying to rank with less difficult keywords led me to be able to rank for more difficult keywords and topics now. This also helps when you have a well-rounded understanding of your niche and its subtopics - which helped me pick the keywords I wanted to rank for.

I determined my top subtopics for content and integrated those related keywords into my writing so that my article would come up when someone was searching for a related topic or question. That being said, the main keyword was always present, so I could also rank the article.

The choice of my keywords has been such an impactful aspect of my content writing, and I’ve tried outside sources, too, to help generate keywords that I have a hard time thinking of or if I want to switch up the combinations I use.

#4. Write Content

I want to have my niche and subtopics picked out before I start writing so I know I will align my content with my niche and be relevant yet entertaining to my readers. Everything fits better together, links make more sense, and my blog seems more cohesive.

I knew I wanted to write about UX research, and that is what most of my blog content is focused on - but understanding the subtopics related to that, such as Artificial Intelligence, allows me to create better content that my readers want to read.

I strive to write blog posts related to each other and can be used as internal links for different posts. This has helped my ranking tremendously and my authority as a blogger. It’s almost like my blog has become a one-stop shop for any information related to my niche. It also helps to post regularly to show that your content is fresh and relevant. Use keywords and other SEO techniques to help your blog rank higher in search results. Content creation software can particularly help within this area.

That said, I tend to create a posting schedule that fits my routine, making the content feel more authentic and less forced. Your audience will be able to get a feel for your realistic posting schedule - but it’s still important to be consistent.

#5. Optimize Your Website for Search Engines

When optimizing your website for search engines, there are a few key things I keep in mind.

#Crawlability

To make sure Google and other search engines could crawl my blog, I connected my blog domain to Google Search Console - one of the best things I’ve done! This allows you to track any sites that can’t be indexed by Google and make corrections, which I’ve done a few times to update the site and ensure readers can find my content.

#Content Quality

I always ensure that my content is high-quality and rich with relevant keywords, but I don’t do keyword stuffing. This has helped me tremendously in growing my readers organically. When the content is entertaining, solves the reader's problem, but is also indexed and recognized by Google - you have a perfect storm.

I always ensure that I’m uploading high-quality blogs and content to my site by doing audits frequently to update information and reformat.

#Internal Linking

Remember when I said you want to write content that relates to each other? The biggest reason I swear by this is that without related blogs, it’s hard to create a web of internal links for people to visit other parts of your site (yes, including Google).

For example, if I write a blog post on the AI art generators, within that blog, I can also link to my blog about the AI content generators when talking about how AI has developed and the other things it is capable of. This is a prime example of how internal linking can help your performance - when someone is interested in a topic, you give them another resource to continue reading.

#Meta Descriptions

I always write meta descriptions for any blog I post. There are helpful plugins like Yoast SEO if you’re not sure how to do these, but it helps with the URLs so that they are relevant to the content.

I always aim to keep each meta description between 100 and 160 characters. This helps Google find them and lets the readers see the preview when the results come up.

#Manually Submit New Blogs to GSC

When I publish new content, I manually submit it to Google Search Console. This will allow the search engine bots to index your new content faster, so it appears higher in the SERPs sooner.

This has helped my content reach new audiences more quickly by removing the step where Google Search Console needs to find the content independently.

#6. Obtain Backlinks to your website

Everything in the previous steps are things you can do on your own.

However, another critical aspect of building a blog is obtaining external links to your website from other websites.

When attempting to improve the ranking of my website, one of the most important things I do is get backlinks. Backlinks are links from other websites that point back to your own. They have been an important signal to Google and other search engines that my website is an authority on a given topic. The more high-quality backlinks I have, the higher my website will rank in search engine results pages (SERPs). This is one of the significant aspects that allowed me to grow my blog into what it is today. Backlinks are incredibly helpful in gaining tracking for your website and content.

I’ve been able to do this a few ways. I have been creating original, thought-provoking content on my blog for a while now, which gives me more of a chance to be recognized as an authority in my niche and even more likely that a popular website or another blogger in that niche will reference my blog. Another way I do this is by reaching out to other authorities in my niche and collaborating with them on a blog post. This can be done by both of us writing on a similar topic and linking to each other’s websites.

#7. Analyze Your Results and Adjust Your Strategy as Necessary

By far, the easiest way I’ve been able to scale up my content has been by keeping an eye on the performance of my blog and what keywords are doing well for me. This is like a self-audit to see if I need to adjust keywords or keyword combinations and what the readers resonate with the most. Ever heard the phrase "fail fast and fail often?" Learning from what's working and what's not is best. I don’t get too sentimentally attached to one idea that isn’t working. My blog is my business, which sometimes means I must make tough calls about what content is performing better.

Ultimately the content I create is for the reader, and what they are interested in is what they will read. There is no point in me creating content that isn’t informational or helpful to the audience I want to target.

Final thoughts

If you're going to start growth hacking your blog and driving more traffic to your website, following these tips is a great place to start. The steps we discussed have worked well for me, and I swear by them. It’s been a long journey but one that’s been incredibly rewarding and lucrative just by following the above steps. Establishing a solid foundation with high-quality content, optimizing my site for search engines, obtaining backlinks, and analyzing my results regularly, it’s helped me get the most out of my online marketing efforts. I'd love to hear about other growth-hacking techniques you've used to boost your blog’s traffic!