How to Rank a Blog on the First Page of Google: Proven Strategies & Tips

Wondering how to rank a blog in the top spots on search engines? Well, you’re supposed to play by the SEO rulebook and follow every standard practice. For instance, write good content, optimize it, build backlinks, and there’s more to it. 

But why is there a strong need to rank higher? Is it that bad to land on page 2? Let us explain! 

Is it that bad to pop up on page 2? 

Imagine you have this amazing piece of content on your site that is packed with useful information. Days pass, and it remains traffic-less; after some time, it starts to get a few clicks but c’mon, that’s just not sufficient. Something like this is not a rare occurrence. It happens in the world of Google. And more so if your content lands on page 2 of the SERPs. This means your content will remain undiscovered by the masses because they’re too busy to check out the second page of the search results. And because of this collective practice, your well-written content has to bear the unpleasant consequences. Therefore, how to rank a blog on page 1 should always be your focus.   

How to Rank Higher on Google

This blog will help all those struggling to rank on page 1 or the top spots of the SERPs. As ranking for the top spot is an extreme sport, in this blog, we’re going to break down the important practices that can help you to rank better, and higher, just how your helpful content deserves it. So, without further ado, let’s begin!   

Match the Search Intent 

Satisfying your audience’s search intent holds ultimate value in many ways. Google’s search algorithms rank content that aligns with searchers’ intent—the kind of page where users are unlikely to hit the back button. This, in turn, helps your content rank higher and receive a constant stream of traffic. But there’s a challenge beneath!

Figuring out the search intent is not a piece of cake and involves a lot of guesswork. For example, if someone is searching for Taylor Swift’s album, The Tortured Poets Department, does it mean they want to buy the physical copy or just check out the number of tracks in the album? So, you see, it’s tricky. 

However, the prior search behavior and the specific search terms can give away the real intention behind the query, but that’s not always the case.  

Another way that can help you is by analyzing the search results for the specific search terms. As algorithms rank the most relevant results, checking out the type, format, and angle of the content pieces can guide you in what kind of content matches the specific search queries. You may find a variety of content assortment for different queries, like, blog posts, videos, product pages, category pages, roundups, calculators, interactive tools, etc. You can take inspiration from there and roll with it! 

Remember, your content is supposed to satisfy the user’s queries. As an SEO, you’re supposed to deduce the thought process of your audience and try to provide the best answer. This is the most basic but workable approach to get your website ranked on Google.   

Write Valuable Content Better than Your Competitors

No involuntary backflip, aesthetically pleasing visuals, and fancy animations can make your audience stay on your page if your content is not good. So, write exceptionally good content. Invest all your energy into it. Strive to be better than your competitors. If not better, try to match their content quality.   

Speaking of the competitors, you’ll need to perform a mini audit regarding what exactly is ranking up there on the search behemoth and what’s up there on the top blogs. See if there are any information gaps your content can fill, or you can also provide a fresh take on the existing discourse, the choice is all yours. 

Here are more ways you can craft better content than your peers: 

• Bring an original thought, idea, or plan to the table. Something you think should be paid attention to 
• Ask an expert or a thought leader to share their views on the topic
• Reflect on the audience’s views and experiences if a certain development is affecting them in any way 
• Try to cover the important trending topics in your industry 
• Focus on creating link-worthy content, here are some videos that can help you out! 

Perform Keyword Research

Now, let’s discuss one of the cornerstones, keyword research for blog posts,  that increases your chances of ranking in Google. Whether you’re optimizing a blog, webpage, or the whole website, you’re supposed to know which rightful keywords to target.  

In addition, keyword research data provides you with useful insights into consumer behavior and preferences. For instance, what are the most popular search terms, all-time trending queries, most asked questions, and similar insights? Knowing this type of data allows you to focus on the things that matter the most in your industry and also helps you extend the coherent content strategy that has the potential to change the game for your business. 

Meanwhile, not focusing on the keyword research can put all your efforts in vain, and you may not see the coveted improvements you want to see. So don’t do that if you want to sleep peacefully at night. 

Here’s the easy and convenient keyword strategy shared by the rock content:   

• You can start by analyzing the broader search terms and phrases related to your industry. Then, you go deep and look for more niche-specific keywords that match your unique value proposition. This approach gives you an easy way to rank for the top positions on page 1. 
• It’s important to pay attention to the volume trends. This is because there’s a prevalent pattern when it comes to popularity increasing for some keywords while others lose their popularity over time. So, the consistent volume trend allows you to pick the ones that have the potential for long-term success. 
•  Pay attention to the people who also ask for the search feature as it gives you more ideas for your secondary keywords list and also lets you know what things people ask regarding your target keyword.  

On-page SEO strategies for top Google Ranking

In order to be eligible for Google rankings, your blog needs to have certain elements integrated into it. Enter on-page SEO that helps you improve blog SEO for better rankings. It encompasses all those elements that help Google search algorithms decide if they should rank your content or not.      

These on-page SEO elements contribute to ranking systems so that your content gets easily noticed. However, many SEO factors will be hard to cover in this blog in its entirety, but we picked a handful of them to cover in this blog.   

• Use Descriptive URLs

URLs – These mere blue links matter to Google. The part of the URL we see in the search results is defined as breadcrumbs. According to Google, a breadcrumb is a trail that shows the page’s position within the site’s hierarchy. 

So, Google identifies and learns breadcrumbs depending on the words in that section. Therefore, it’s better to include words in a URL that are easy to understand for users and Google rather than some random identifiers.  

https://www.example.com/pets/cats.html

A URL that only contains random identifiers is less helpful for users; for example:

https://www.example.com/2/6772756D707920636174

If you want to have a technical approach, you can also apply breadcrumbs structured data.   

• Control Your Snippet 

A snippet is the short description that appears below the search result and the blue link. This abridged text is extracted from the content on the page. And occasionally, it is sourced from the meta description. Yep, the same meta description that provides the overview of your content in a single or couple of sentences. 

A good meta description is one that is concise and provides an apt summary of the whole content. Check out other tips for writing good meta descriptions for more inspiration.

• Use Subheadings to Improve Readability

In the search central office hours video, John Mueller told us that Google does use headings to better understand the content and what it’s actually trying to say. This puts the great emphasis on using headings and subheadings throughout the content piece. It not only separates the sections but also allows readers to skim and analyze the content easily without looking out for the important sections.

• Incorporate Keywords 

After you’re done writing the blog piece, then proceed to incorporate keywords throughout the content. Put them in the areas where they fit right and create a natural flow rather than create some forced, out-of-place combination of words. 

Remember, when it comes to keyword placement in your content, it’s best to keep a healthy balance and avoid keyword stuffing at all costs. Sticking to this practice will allow you to go up the SERPs and increase blog traffic with SEO.    

In this article, Brian Dean advised to use the target keywords at the beginning of your title tag. He called this ‘frontloading’ your keyword. As Google algorithms read page titles to understand what it is about, keywords in the beginning can suggest to algorithms that these words are the most important, which of course helps with the ranking.

To know more about SEO Strategies for Google top ranking, check out this document to understand and apply Google search technical requirements. 

Build Relevant Backlinks 

It’s been established that backlinks are important. Google’s algorithm, PageRank, ranks websites in the search results based on the number and quality of links pointing to them. So, it’s mandatory to have backlink strategies to boost blog ranking.

According to the search behemoth: 

“Google primarily finds pages through links from other pages it already crawled. In many cases, these are other websites that are linking to your pages. Other sites linking to you is something that happens naturally over time, and you can also encourage people to discover your content by promoting your site.”

Some backlinks are more powerful than others if they’re coming from authoritative, strong referring domains. It notifies algorithms that the established domain trusts a certain site and passes down its authority to it. Therefore, you should prioritize link building for blog SEO, look out for opportunities to build relevant backlinks, and apply the approach of creating link-worthy content from scratch.  

Enhance the Social Signals 

You’re missing out big time if you don’t promote content on your socials. Apart from the fact that social media is the ultimate powerhouse to make your content go viral in no time, it also helps increase your site’s visibility in organic search ranking through social signals. 

In case you don’t know, social signals are the collective shares, likes, and overall visibility a blog piece or a site gets on socials. That’s why it’s ultimately important to equally distribute and promote your content and media on all popular platforms where your audience is likely to be present. 

Analyze Performance 

Once your blog ends up ranking on page 1, then congratulations! But your job isn’t done here cause it’s utterly important that you make efforts to maintain it too.   

Keep track of page views and how they’re increasing or decreasing over time as they help you identify traffic trends and patterns. The goal is to see page views growing over time with each post.    

Also, pay close attention to the tracking sessions because they bring clarity regarding how many times people have visited your site. This helps you figure out which pages are bringing in the most organic traffic to your site. Note that you’re likely to have more page views than sessions because visitors scroll through multiple pages once they’re on a certain site that grabs their attention.    

Unfortunately, if you’re experiencing a low CTR and pageviews, then you should perform a content audit and try to find the root cause of the issue. Proceed to blog content optimization, make tweaks to the sections where they’re necessary, and then analyze if it’s making any difference.  

Wrap Up

According to a Google Product Expert, “Rankings are a mix of algorithmically determined quality and popularity metrics.” 

It’s not easy to win in the algorithmic realm and make it to the top of the SERPs. It’s tough, it’s complex, and it requires undivided attention and hard work.  A lot goes into this journey, and your winning strategy should be a blend of all important and necessary things, from presenting well-thought-out content to applying standard SEO practices.  It all should be coherent, concrete, and connected. 

We hope you got some helpful ideas related to ranking your content. I hope they work out for you. Good luck!