How to Rank Higher On Google in 2021
The scope of digital marketing is growing at an annual rate of 25–30% in India and in order to grow your online business, you have to focus on every important aspect of digital marketing and one such aspect which we will discuss today is SEO.
If you are not on the Top Page of Google Search, then the chances of anyone visiting your website are almost negligible.
To rank on Page 1, we must first understand.
What are the Google Ranking Factors?
Google uses around 200 factors to determine the ranking of a website. These factors can be mainly classified into three categories -
1. On-Page SEO
2. Off-Page SEO
3. Technical SEO
What is On-Page SEO?
On-Page SEO refers to all the activities done on the website itself to improve the page rankings. It includes proper keyword research, title tag, meta description, alt text for images, interlinking, URL structure, header tags, sitemaps, unique and valuable content.
Let’s discuss each of these factors in brief-
Proper Keyword Research
Keyword Research is the process of identifying and analyzing the keywords that you want to rank for on Google search engine.
Proper keyword research helps you in identifying the volume of a particular keyword and its competitiveness.
Free Keyword Research Tools
These tools will help you in finding the relevant keywords.
Things to keep in mind while analyzing the keywords-
- The volume of a keyword should be medium or high.
- Competition of a keyword should be less.
- Use long-tail keywords.
What are long-tail keywords?
Long-tail keywords are more specific keywords and are longer than most used keywords. Long-tail keywords receive less search traffic, but their conversion rate is higher as they are more specific.
Unique Content
Google appreciates the content that is highly valuable and unique.
Unique content includes giving more insights to the audiences on the topic, using infographics on the post, case studies, etc.
Unique content compels the reader to stay on the website for a longer duration.
Title Tag
The majority of the audience decides whether they should click on a particular website or not, just based on the headline. Your headline should be attractive enough to convince your audience to open your website.
Include your main keywords in the headline and if possible, write them at the beginning of the sentence.
The headline should be between 50 to 60 characters.
See the below example
Meta Description
After finding the best keywords for the headline, you should focus on the meta description, a summary of the page located just below the headline.
An attractive meta description will result in a higher number of click-through rates (CTR).
Google may use your meta description as rich snippets if they give users a more accurate description of the keyword.
You should make sure that the meta description contains the main keywords.
A meta description should be between 150 to 160 characters.
Alt Text for Images
Alt (alternative) Text, also known as alt tag, is an Html code (name) assigned to define a particular image on a webpage.
By applying correct keywords as the alt text for the pictures on your website, you can improve your webpage ranking.
It gives information to Google about what this image represents.
Interlinking
Interlinking is the process of linking one of your pages to some other page on your website related to your current content.
The interlinking process will help in increasing the time duration your audience spends on your website.
Interlinking can help in boosting the low-ranking pages by transferring juice from high-ranking pages.
URL Structure
URL structure is like the address of a particular webpage on a website. It gives an idea to the audience about the landing page of a website.
It should be clear and precise, containing a proper keyword about the landing page.
Header Tags
Header Tags are the HTML tags that show the headings and subheadings on a particular webpage.
They range from H1 to H6. An H1 Tag indicates the heading on a webpage, whereas an H2 Tag indicates the subheading on a webpage.
The header tags help Google in understanding the structure of your blog.
Sitemaps
The sitemap shows the structure of your website to both humans and computers. It shows what content is there on your website.
For humans, it is an HTML sitemap, and for computers, it is an XML sitemap.
You can generate your XML sitemap by typing “/sitemap.xml” after the name of your website. For example- www.xyz.com/sitemap.xml.
Submitting sitemaps help Google in crawling the pages that you want.
On-page SEO was the number 1 factor on how to rank higher on Google in 2021.
What is Off-Page SEO?
Off-Page SEO is a process of building external backlinks to improve the website ranking.
The higher the number of relevant and authoritative external backlinks, the higher the website ranking.
How to get Backlinks?
- You can use tools like MOZ toolbar, Ubersuggests, Semrush, etc. to know about the relevant sources of the backlinks received by your competitors.
- Once you have identified the sources, you can reach out to them and brief them on how unique and reliable your content is and then request them to mention your content in their blogs.
- You can link your content from high domain authority websites through guest posting on those sites.
- You can create infographics that would be helpful to other blogs.
Benefits of relevant external backlinks
- Helps in increasing the traffic to your website
- Creates a high Domain Authority (DA) for your website.
- Helps to increase your page rankings.
- Makes you more credible and builds trust among your audience.
After On-page SEO, one needs to look at every concept of Off-page SEO, in order to determine how to rank higher on Google in 2021.
What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO includes all the activities required to optimize the website and improve its ranking.
It includes-
Page Load Time
Page load time is the actual amount of time it takes to load your website. Lesser the page load time, the higher the ranking of your website.
Your website should not take more than 3 seconds to load the page. You can use Google PageSpeed Insights to check your page load time and then make any necessary changes if required, to decrease the page load time.
Mobile Friendly
The majority of people use mobile devices for their day-to-day activities and online searches, and therefore you need to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly.
You can do a mobile-friendly test on Google Search Console.
Secure Website
An unsecured website will create doubts among the audience, and therefore you must obtain an SSL certificate to secure your website. You can procure this certificate from your hosting site.
An alert ‘⚠ ‘symbol just before the website URL shows that the website is insecure, whereas “HTTPS://” shows that the site is fully secured.
Identify the broken links
Sometimes, while opening a backlink or a website, you might see that an error has occurred. Now, why does it happens? It happens because either the link is not correctly attached or the link attached is a broken one. Such broken links can reduce your website rankings.
You can use the Dead Link Checker tool to check if there’s any broken link on your website and or links from another website to your website.
Bounce rate
The bounce rate is the percentage of the audience that leaves a webpage without taking any action. An action can be either buying your product or subscribing to your website, etc.
Bounce rate increases due to high page load times, a higher number of broken links, an unattractive website, etc.
You can use Google Analytics to identify the bounce rate on your website and identify the reason behind such a bounce rate.
Canonical URLs
A canonical URL is the URL of the page that Google thinks is the best representative from a set of similar pages on your site.
An E-commerce website consists of the product having different varieties such as color, size, etc.
Each variety forms a separate URL and, this confuses GOOGLE about which is the main product page.
And therefore, websites use canonical tags to help Google find the main product page.
Indexing Issues
You can check whether a particular link of your website is indexed by Google using Google Search Console.
If the link is not indexed, GSC will provide the reason for the same.
After identifying the reason, you can make the necessary corrections on your website.
Noindex Tag
Not all the pages of a website are worth indexing and, so you can add a no-index tag to such pages.
If you are using Yoast SEO on your WordPress website, you can easily no-index these pages.
So, these were all the steps required to rank higher on Google in 2021.
I hope you found this article helpful.
You can comment if you found this article helpful or if you have any queries.
