4 Easy Ways to Get Your Blog Post in the Top Search Results of Google

Written by syedbalkhi | Published 2022/06/28
Tech Story Tags: hackernoon-top-story | seo | blog-post-optimization | keyword-research | search-engine | search-engine-optimization | keywords | search-engine-ranking | hackernoon-es | hackernoon-hi | hackernoon-zh | hackernoon-vi | hackernoon-fr | hackernoon-pt | hackernoon-ja

TLDROne of the easiest ways of boosting your conversions is to appear on the first page of Google. By appearing in the top five search results of Google you can boost your traffic by 95%. Using the right keyword not only helps you secure the top search results but also helps create relevant content for your target audience. Google suggests these keywords because people search for these queries too when they look for yoga-related content. The difficulty of using a keyword research tool to analyze them is 83% of the difficulty.via the TL;DR App

One of the easiest ways of boosting your conversions is to appear on the first page of Google. By appearing in the top five search results of Google, you can boost your traffic by 95%. What’s more interesting to know is that, of all searchers, 75% of people don’t even scroll beyond the first page of Google.

So, if not in the top five search results, it’s important that you’re at least on the first page of Google. This might sound challenging. But it’s not as tough as it sounds to be if you’re doing your SEO right.

SEO (search engine optimization) is the process through which you improve your website to increase its visibility in organic search results. But SEO is constantly evolving and can be confusing for many of us. Sometimes you don’t even know if your SEO strategy is on the right track.

It can be tempting to spend a lot of money to outsource your project to an SEO agency or hire a brilliant marketing manager. But optimizing your business for SEO is a long-term process. So, instead of depending entirely on someone, it’s better if you learn the basics of it to know that you’re on the right track.

So, let’s look at some of the most important steps to ensure that your SEO is on the right track. Let’s get started.

Step 1: Create a List of Keywords

Every SEO strategy starts with keyword research. Using the right keyword not only helps you secure the top search results but also helps create relevant content for your target audience.

So, how do you know which keyword is best for your business? One way of knowing that is to use Google suggest. Just go to Google and start typing the topic you want to write about. For example, say, you have created a blog, and you want to publish a post on yoga. Now, type yoga in the Google search box. You’ll see several suggestions come up right below the search box.

Google suggests these keywords because people search for these queries too when they look for yoga-related content. These keywords work extremely well in helping your content rank in organic search. Since they come directly from Google, it clearly means that people are searching for these queries too.

So, add these keywords to your list of keywords.

Now, you can use a keyword research tool to analyze them and understand their volume, density, and other related information. You’ll see that the long-tail keywords have relatively less search volume than the shorter ones.

For example, let’s take the keywords ‘yoga poses’ and ‘yoga for mindfulness’ and analyze the two.

The first one, ‘yoga poses’, has over 110.0K search volume in the US, and 429.7K search volume globally. The keyword difficulty is 83%.

For the second one, ‘yoga for mindfulness’, the search volume in the US is just 210, and globally, it's 2.6K; which is much lower than the first one. In terms of keyword difficulty, we see that it’s just 43%.

Now, you might be tempted to select ‘yoga poses’ as the keyword for your content because of its high search volume. But this can make things more challenging for you because now you have a bigger competition.

Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, tend to be less competitive and are easier to rank for. So, by using them to create content, you can quickly rank in the top search results.

Step 2: Analyze Google’s First Page

Once you have your list of keywords, you need to figure out the type of content you want to create. The best way to do that is to analyze the first page of Google with the keyword you want to work on.

For example, let’s say you pick the second keyword, ‘yoga for mindfulness’. Now, type this in the Google search box, and look at the results that Google offers.

The top results are video content. That’s probably because anyone who’s looking for the specific keyword is searching with the intent to learn the yoga poses or techniques that can help them achieve mindfulness.

Understanding the exact way to do it becomes easier by watching a video than reading a blog post. So, they look for videos that will help them understand the process better.

This means your content can easily rank for search results if you add a video showing the yoga poses or techniques to achieve mindfulness.

Step 3: Write for Humans, Not for Search Engines

The next important factor to consider is to write for humans and not for search engines. Many marketers are too focused on using keywords in their content to boost their SEO. This defeats the real purpose of creating the post.

Doing that is the wrong approach to improving your SEO. Search engines are just robots. They would never become your customer or contribute to boosting your conversions. They just read the script and don’t understand the true meaning of it. So, instead of writing for search engines, focus on writing for real humans.

For that, you need to make your posts engaging and informative.

Try to hook your readers with an interesting opening, back it with stats, and add social proof to make it more convincing. Adding social proof can help you boost your conversions by 270%. And combined with the stats, and your powerful heading, it can help you create a copy to boost credibility for your business.

You should also consider adding relevant and high-quality images, gifs, infographics, screenshots, etc., to make the content more interesting for your readers. This will help you create recurring visitors, improve your customer retention strategy, decrease bounce rate, generate referral traffic, and of course, boost your conversions too.

All of these are essential factors for ranking in Google’s search results. By working on the way you write, you can easily start showing up in organic searches.

Step 4: Optimize for On-page SEO

Another major step to consider when working on your SEO strategy is to optimize your content for on-page SEO. There are several factors that come into consideration here. The first is your readability. Many marketers use technical jargon to sound smart. But that’s a bad practice because it decreases the readability score of your content.

Google loves content that is easy to read and understand. Anything that’s too difficult to understand will defeat the purpose of the search. So, use simple words, shorter sentences, and smaller paragraphs.

Also, when creating your content, always make it scannable. You can do that by using appropriate headings and subheadings. The second thing to focus on is the use of keywords naturally in your content. Look for related keywords in Google by typing your main keyword.

You’ll have several options at the bottom of the page.

Now, use them naturally in your content. In doing so, don’t try to stuff your keywords if it doesn’t fit in. This will only worsen the case for you. The third factor to consider is internal linking. Make sure to link your content to other relevant pages on your website. In doing so, try linking high authority pages to low authority pages.

That way, you can easily direct your traffic to those pages and help them improve the authority of those pages too.

Over to You

Improving your SEO to boost your organic search result isn’t a single day’s task. It takes time and effort to get the results. Also, SEO is a vast topic in general. And as mentioned before, Google has 200 ranking factors to rank pages for organic search.

For most small businesses and solopreneurs, it can be challenging to cover all of these factors at once. However, starting on the right note can help you achieve the results you want for your business.

The above steps are a few effective ways to get started. It might take time, but by following the above steps, you can definitely rank in the top search results.


Written by syedbalkhi | Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site.
Published by HackerNoon on 2022/06/28