Every marketer wishes to get top Google rankings for their website & want to gain organic traffic.
Well, this cannot be a hard target if you follow the simple strategies to optimize your website in 2023 to rank on top pages of the Google & other search engines.
Ranking in Google is a long-term game, but if you follow the right practices then you can achieve the goals in a short time.
Everyone is aware of Brian Dean, Founder of Backline. He has suggested some key techniques to get higher ranking in 2023 which are proven & should be done as a first step when you start doing SEO of your website, These steps are:
- Remove “Zombie Pages” from the website
- Fix technical SEO issues
- Set the on-page & optimize the content (Basic & Advance SEO)
- improve the Click-through rate
- Speed up your website’s loading speed
- Write content using “Skyscraper Technique”.
Let’s talk about the above steps briefly.
Step 1: Remove “Zombie Pages” From the Website
You don’t need to be scared about the term “Zombie”. Zombie pages hurt your website SEO score & can be the road blockers in the ranking. If you do not know about zombie pages, let me explain you.
What Are Zombie Page?
The pages which have not much, outdated information or don’t see any purpose in the website are the Zombie pages. These are hardly seen by someone & don’t rank in search engine.
These pages have:
- Old/outdated content
- Category & tag pages
- Search result pages
- Product pages which no sales
- Thin/low-quality content
- Pages with duplicate content
If you have a ton of content on your website that does not mean you are going to rank higher. The lower-quality content will stop getting traction & become zombie pages.
How Zombie Pages Hurt SEO?
Zombie pages are hidden killer for the website, they don’t directly hurt the website ranking. These pages can create content duplicate issues & cause a downfall in the ranking.
So that is always better to identify those pages & remove or redirect them to their related pages so that it can create values.
Step 2: Fix Technical SEO Issues
Fixing technical SEO issues are one of the most important part of the SEO & directly linked to the website ranking & traffic.
These issues may contain:
- 404 pages
- 302 redirect which should have 301 redirects
- Images with missing ALT tags
- Duplicate page title & meta descriptions
- Broken links
- Non-search engine friendly URLs
- Pagination issues
- Missing or wrong schema implementation
There is a huge list of technical SEO issues which can be a roadblock on your search engine ranking.
How to Find the technical SEO issues?
These are the high chances that you cannot find & fix technical SEO issues manually. You need to take the help of any of the tool which is available online. The ones I use & prefer are:
Once you run a report from any of the above tool you can simply download it & start fixing the issues by yourself or take help of developer if you want.
You will realize in a few weeks of fixing all issues, your website ranking will start increasing & start getting more traffic as well.
Step 3: Set the On-Page & Optimize the
Content
On-page SEO is the most basic & crucial part of your website. It can make or break your website ranking.
To set up the website on-page, you need to look at the basic & fix:
- Website title & meta description: Be sure you optimize your page title & description according to the keyword you are looking to rank. Simply use your targeted keyword in the first part of the title & use that keyword in the description too.
- Use Keyword in page URL: It is a very good & suggested method if you use keywords in the URL of the page which keeps it short and simple. The pages with short URLs & keyword usage get more attention from Google & it prefers those pages to rank better.
- Heading tags (H1, H2, H3 etc.): Use keywords properly in heading tags, apart from page title & descriptions the heading tags are the most important factor in your ranking & also increases engagement.
- Keyword usage in content: Use the keyword in content. The main keyword should be used in the first part of the content so that Google can understand that you are keen to share knowledge on a particular topic. Use LSI keywords in the content to rank for related & multiple keywords using the same page.
- Use Images in Content & Optimize them: Obviously, no one wants to read a page that does not have visuals & images. It this very important to add images & optimize them with related titles & Alt tags. The benefit of adding the images on your content is that you can use the keywords as the ALT tags & image title which you cannot place in the content.
The above issues are some of the basic SEO issues but these need to be fixed as soon as possible & whenever you create new pages & posts on the website.
Step 4: Improve The Click-Through Rate
You have set up the on-page of the website, but what’s next? Well, you need to optimize your website to click-through rate.
If you are ranking good in search engine but are not getting the clicks means something is not right with the website.
By click-through rate optimization we can simply grab the traffic & google will also increase the ranking by seeing people are clicking your website more than your competitors & place you above them.
How to improve Click Through Rate?
Improving click-through rate is very easy but require analysis. Putting numbers in title tags are the best practice to improve the keywords ranking.
For example, if you are running a florist shop & you are writing a blog on wedding flowers. Besides writing a title as “Flower for Weddings”, you can simply write “15 Flower You Should Use in Your Wedding”.
You can also use grabby words in place of numbers is you do not want to use them. You can write something like:
“Best Flower You Should Use in Your Wedding”
“Must Have Flower to Use in Your Wedding”
Once you do this, you will be noticed that your click-through rate is increasing & users will end up by performing a conversion.
Step 5: Speed Up Your Website’s Loading Speed
If you really want to get a higher ranking in Google then website loading speed is one of the major factors for the ranking.
The recent study shows that the website which has fast page loading speeds quickly outrank the websites with slow loading speed.
This can be the main reason if your website is not ranking well.
If your website speed is slow, it will annoy users & they will exit from it. Same as users, if Google finds your website slow it will lower down your website rankings.
To identify, you can choose one of the following tools:
You can choose any of the above-mentioned tools to check the website loading speed. These tools can simply list the issues related to the website speed along with the solutions to how to fix them. You can simply resolve them or get the help of the developer to fix these issues.
Step 6: Write Content Using “Skyscraper Technique”
The “Skyscraper Technique” is one of the trending content creation & posting technique suggested by Brian Dean himself.
Just like the name suggests, the Skyscraper technique is to compose the content with the in-depth details about any topic.
You simply need to search for any topic on Google & see what your competitors are posting & write detailed content on it. You can also look into your website to check which blogs have content with similar topics & merge them all with in-depth details.
Once you do that, you will see in a few days your content start ranking well & users will engage to it.
It is a new & trending technique which surely give results to your website.
Conclusion
SEO in 2023 will be getting more technical & getting website ranking would be more difficult if you do not follow the right SEO techniques, it will be difficult to rank.
Like I always said, always optimize the website for users & Google will automatically rank it better.
If you think we have missed any important information or you have more technique to share then list them in the comment section below.
How to Get Higher Google Rankings in 2023 [New Checklist] – By Brian Dean
How to Improve Keywords Ranking FAQs
Basic SEO means setup the initial SEO for the website which includes page titles & descriptions, content optimisation, redirection, image tags etc to boost increase search visibility of your website.
To check website keywords ranking, you can either manually check them or use some keywords ranking tools like MOZ, AdvanceWebRanking etc which comes with monthly/yearly subscription.
We provide SEO & Google Analytics Consulting services in the following countries:
United States | United Kingdom | Australia | Singapore | India | New Zealand | Dubai
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