Ranking your website in Google on the first page of Google can seem like a complex undertaking; mostly because it is! There are a lot of moving parts and the rules of the game are always changing.
We reached out to 7 SEO experts to share their #1 tip and #1 tool for ranking a website in Google.
#1 - Keyword Research
"My #1 tip for ranking on Google: My top tip for ranking a site is properly aligning content to keyword research. That’s a bit vague and broad, so let me explain why I don’t just say put your keyword in your title. That’s obvious and basic, so I assume you want a more in depth tip. Keyword research is vital - and it should help to form a hierarchy and content structure for your site. Having a well aligned content structure that covers multiple related keywords is what sets apart a site that ranks decently for a few keywords from one that ranks for dozens of high traffic terms and a plethora of long tail search terms."
"My #1 Tool: My favorite SEO Tool is SEMRush for many many reasons. It’s very powerful and covers a full array of digital marketing needs."
Trevor Stobler
Digital Marketer
Stolber Digital Marketing
stolber.com
#2 - Be the Best Result
"My #1 tip for ranking on Google: "Be the best result. Google's goal is to provide their users with the best experience, and they're pretty good at doing that. You should know which search queries you're targeting for any given page on your website, and you should work towards making that page the best available resource for that given topic. That means having great content and a great user experience. Or, for commercial queries, having the best products or services available for those queries."
"My #1 Tool: Google Search Console. Google Search Console is first party data directly from Google that tells you exactly which queries are driving traffic to your site and what position you're ranking for those queries. It also gives you insights into how Google is crawling and indexing your website, your site speed, and more. Most third party tools are just trying to replicate the data that's already in Google Search Console, and they're more useful for competitor research than ranking your own site."
Riley Farabaugh
Founder
Monte Verde Media
monteverdemedia.com
#3 - Comprehensive Content Strategy
"My #1 tip for ranking on Google: Create a comprehensive content strategy. Determine the topics you want to be known for (make sure it is related to your product/service and also something your clients will care about) and use those as a basis for doing keyword research and developing your content strategy. For instance, Accelity wants to be known for B2B SaaS Growth and B2B LinkedIn Lead Generation, as we are a marketing agency that sells to B2B SaaS companies and we have a specialty in LinkedIn knowledge. We've identified countless keywords that speak to those high level topics and related sub-topics, and have focused our content development efforts around those topics. We've also created pillar pages on both topics as part of our content strategy: B2B SaaS Growth and B2B LinkedIn Lead Generation."
"My #1 Tool: SEMRush It has a wide range of tools to help with every aspect of SEO, including getting recommendations on ways to improve your site to save you time. Accelity's favorites are the Site Audit, Backlink Audit, and Keyword Position Tracking (along with the various keyword research/planning tools)."
Alicia Torres
Director of Client Services
Accelity
accelitymarketing.com
#4 - Quality & Consistent Content
"My #1 tip for ranking on Google: Organic ranking involves a methodical and strategic approach that involves alot of disciplines. However, from what we've seen "Content is King." Quality content, released on a consistent schedule has been the biggest contributor to our SEO success. This needs to be interlaced with semantic code that the search engines understand, along with internal back-links that keep your site's content connected to the blog post."
"My #1 Tool: We use Wordpress for a lot of our websites. One of the two tools we have loved is "Yoast SEO" and "Rank Math." Which both "score" your content based on your defined target keyword/keyphrase. It assists in the writing process to make sure the content is of sufficient length, uses the keywords in the correct places, is easy to ready, is sharable, has the correct backlinks, and other helpful content suggestions. There are other tools you can use that provide the same solution if you don't have WordPress. Such as SEOreviewTools.com but they aren't integrated into the platform."
Andrew Golver
VP of Marketing Strategy
Valtim Marketing Solutions
valtim.com/blog
#5 - Understand User Intent
"My #1 tip for ranking on Google: Understanding User Intent. Google's algorithms are getting smarter and are trying not only to match keywords but trying to match the intent of those keywords as well. If the user is typing in a "buying" keyword then more eCommerce websites will show up in the search results rather than blog posts. When you're creating a new page or piece of content just do a quick search on your primary and secondary keywords. Who's ranking on those pages and what do their pages/content look like."
"My #1 Tool: I love Moz and all they do. About 6 months ago, I switched over to AhRefs to do most of my SEO research. I love it. I tend to think that AhRefs goes a little deeper into the data and allows me to think more critically."
John Paglio
Digital Marketing Specialist
Flyte new media
takeflyte.com
#6 - Find Your Friends
"My #1 tip for ranking on Google: Find your friends within your industry - the kids you’d sit with if the internet was a high school dining hall - and be generous with your links to them! Give them reasons to share you. To share your content. And boost your visibility to their audience, one that you already know is relevant and aligned to yours!"
"My #1 Tool: I really like SpyFu because it allows you to dive deep into what your competition is doing in the playing field of both Google organic and paid. You can see what pages their site ranks for, what keywords they are bidding on, examples of their ads and even discover competition that you did not even know existed. It is like having your very own private spy!"
Captolia Eaton
Brand Coach
The Digital Witch
thedigitalwitch.com
#7 - Keyword Research!
Yes, we feel this one is so incredibly important that we have listed it TWICE on our list!
"My #1 tip for ranking on Google: Do your homework. By that I mean Keyword Research. If you're not identifying which keyword terms are most popularly searched then you're going to be like a ship without a sail. It's important identify a core set of keywords to go after and prioritize the highest value phrases first and foremost before moving onto other more competitive or lower search volume phrases."
"My #1 Tool: The number one tool that I use to rank a website is Google My Business. If you're a local business targeting searchers in your local market, a Google My Business page is virtually essential in helping your business rank high for local searches. Because Google knows your location of interest based on your IP Address or search intent, they're able to then serve up the most relevant results to YOU based on their own database of Google My Business listings with verified physical locations that are actually physically closest to you."
Mitch Berriman
Owner/Operator
Berriman Web Marketing
berrimanwebmarketing.com
Whether you have owned a business for 20 years or 2 years, you should be investing your time and money into Google. If you want your product or service to be easily accessible to the public, as well as to your intended audience, your website needs to appear on the first page for search results. The professionals listed above have had an enormous amount of experience and luck using Google, and appearing on the first page for search results.
If you are searching for assistance, and simply not sure how to get to the first page, look no further. Our team at Eternity will get you there in no time at all.
