Ranking On Google
In part 2 of this article on what is Google looking for to rank you we are going to look at things you can do to help get your blog posts ranked. Yesterday we talked about keywords and content and how you need a good keyword list to create quality content. Doing this gives Google the words to rank you for, so spending time on building a keyword list of 100’s or even 1000’s of keywords is important.
What else can you do?
Tags
Tags are an important way to point things out on a post and behind the scenes as well. Books have a table of contents at the beginning an an index at the end. These help organize the book and lead people to what they will find.
A tag on a blog post does that as well. I think the key with tags is to get consistent and use them. We know Google likes them and will factor that into whether they rank you or not.
Title Tag
Content is the most important part of a page. The title tag is second. This is an SEO factor Google looks for so get your primary keyword in it. Research has shown that if you put your keyword at the beginning of the title tag you get a boost from Google.
Description Tag
Here you want to get in the habit of summarizing what your page is about. Get your primary keyword in it. This may not be as important as it used to be to Google, but it does help. Again get in the habit of doing it and it will become second nature to you..
H1Tag
The H1 tag gives you a second chance to establish relevancy along with your title tag. Adding it at the beginning of a post helps Google as well as your reader.
H2 and H3 Tags
H2 tags are headings and H3 tags are subheadings. Get in the habit of creating them so they look the same.
Short tags of two to three words are all you need for an H2 tag. An H3 tag can be longer, but you do not want to write a sentence.
I personally think many bloggers over use tags. You are not creating these to add more words to your post, so do not tag everything.
I like to use tags as a way to organize my articles. Having an H2 tag is one part of the article. You can add H3 tags instead of bullet points if you want. You see how I have done that in this article.
LSI
Latent semantic indexing is a phrase the search engine optimization experts pay attention to. What does it mean to the average guy like you and I?
These are words that help establish meaning. They make sense to be in your content.
If you are writing an article on dogs the words cats, puppy, pets might show up. These are words that you want to have as they sound naturally in your content.
Page Loading Speed
Google does not like slow loading pages and neither does your visitor. If you are like me you will click off of a page rather then wait for it to load slowly.
SEO
Search engine optimization is something you can do to everything on your page. For example, use the primary keyword for the page in the alt tag for all images. This helps establish relevancy for that page.
You can bold the primary keyword and underline it one time in the body as well. This is re-establishing what that page is about. This may not be a major factor in getting ranked, but it is simple to get in the habit of doing and does not take you much time.
Outbound Links
Links on your page pointing to another page outside of it can help in ranking, especially when you link to an authority site in your niche. Google likes this because you are creating a better experience for your visitor. Have the link open into a new page so when your visitor leaves it they are brought back to your site.
Inbound Links
These are knows as backlinks and are important.Google thinks of them as a vote for your site. The more votes you have the more important your site could be in your niche.,
One thing you can do is study how to get backlinks form authority sites. These sites have a high page rank which can help boost your own page rank as well.
Here is a good article on asking for a link: http://www.rankxl.com/easy-link-outreach/
You can also bookmark each post you make to create backlinks. I like to use Only Wire for that.
At the very least add the link and relevant comment for your new page to your own Google Plus, Facebook, and Twitter account. Doing this shows you are more social which Google likes!
Update Content
Most blogs do not have posts that are 1000 to 2000 words. You may have a blog that is already full of short content.
The first thing you can do is go back and look at post with keywords you would like to rank for. Start updating the content by adding more words and adding H2 and H3 tags where ir makes sense.
Be sure and use relevant longtail keywords as well as keywords that offer latent semantic indexing as we’ve discussed above in this article. Read this article on what is themed content to get more ideas on that.
Another thing I like to do is find a relevant video from YouTube and paste the embed code at the bottom of the page. You’ll see that on this page. Since Google owns YouTube, why not let them spider your blog by following the link from YouTube back to it.
One final point is do some internal linking. Link to other relevant posts or use a plug in to do that for you.
This may seem like a lot of work, but establishing habits in creating content the correct way will become second nature to you. These are some of the primary factors that Google uses to rank websites and blogs, so you may as well start doing them right now!
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