“How to rank my business on Google?”, a question I asked myself when I started my first Online Business. Let me reveal to you the 10 important basics Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your business website I learned.
How to rank my business on Google? – Pre-requisites
Hi there, Edmund here.
Are you asking the same question too?
What I am going to share with you in this post are 10 important basics to optimize your website’s SEO for Google Ranking.
These are the things I learned while building my website. SEO is not as straight forward as just learn, apply and voila First Page Ranking!
You’ll need to research for low competition keywords, observe your post/page ranking and fine-tuning along the way.
It is important to note that SEO tips here are the guide to good practices when creating valuable contents for your website. These tips are also categorized as on-page SEO, which means it applies to your post/page internally.
Off-page SEO could include backlinks to your post/page from other authoritative websites, social media engagement, and forum discussions. But we are not talking about these in this article.
Alright? Let’s get started
How to rank my business on Google? – 10 Important Basics
These 10 basics should apply to every post or page within your Business Website.
How to rank my business on Google #1 – Keyword appears in the URL and Page Title
You should use your keyword as the Title of your article, at the same time let it appears at in the URL.
For example, if your keyword is “How to train a puppy to sit”.
Your Title of the post/page: How to Train a Puppy to Sit?
Your URL of the post/page: http://www.yourwebsitename/how-to-train-a-puppy-to-sit
Did you notice that the spaces are filled with “-“?
The purpose of this is to allow Google search engine differentiate the individual words.
Rather looking all jumbled up like this “howtotrainapuppytosit”. It is not even readable by a human.
This is done automatically if you are using WordPress.
How to rank my business on Google #2 – The meta description contains the keyword.
Google will show a brief description of every website with the search results.
From the above example, I searched Google with the keyword “How to train a puppy to sit”. This is one of the return results and you can see that the keyword do appear in the meta description.
The owner of the page also positioned the keyword at the beginning of the description. This is done with a purpose to let Google’s crawling spider notice the keyword at first sight.
Oh, btw, did you noticed that the keyword is in the title and URL too?
How to rank my business on Google #3 – Keyword appears in the subheadings.
This is not a major ranking factor, but it is beneficial to create subheading in your post/page and place your keyword in it.
Subheadings will make your post/page neater and more readable too.
If you are observant enough, you can see I do this too.
If you are using WordPress, within the toolbar’s [Paragraph] field, you can choose several subheading types.
How to rank my business on Google #4 – Images contain alt tags with the target keyword.
It is recommended to add your keyword within the alt tags of your images.
Alternative text will appear instead if it happened that the reader could not load your image on their browser.
Having keyword in the alternative text will also allow Google to index your image. If someone tries to do an image search using the keyword, your image could possibly appear in the search results.
How to rank my business on Google #5 – The keyword appears in the first paragraph of the page.
This is beneficial for the Google’s spider to notice the keyword at first sight. Similar to the meta description I mentioned earlier.
Let’s click on the search result of the page I found above and take a look at its first paragraph.
Indeed, the keyword does appear at the first phrase of the first paragraph. Noticed the keyword in subheading text too?
How to rank my business on Google #6 – Do not use the same targeted keyword for many pages.
It is recommended not to use the same keyword for many posts/pages.
This is to prevent your own posts/pages competing with each other resulting in “keyword cannibalization” which may result in lower ranking by Google.
(Click on the link to see full explanation.)
How to rank my business on Google #7 – Keyword density is between 1% to 3% in your page contents.
Keyword stuffing is no longer a valid SEO technique since Google has updated its search algorithm many years ago.
Google will penalize posts/pages that stuff keywords unnaturally into the contents resulting in lower ranking or not indexed at all.
Keyword should be naturally in the post/page such that it does not feel weird reading it.
Using the sample paragraph of the puppy training site I found earlier, Keyword stuffing would be like this.
“How to train a puppy to sit on command is an important skill for new dog owners to learn, and it is one of the very first things dog owners love to learn how to train a puppy to sit. We love the intrigue of seeing our new puppy respond to us when we learned how to train a puppy to sit. And it’s common practice not to be too concerned at first about how to train a puppy to sit, whether puppy obeys or not.”
You get what I mean now? 🙂
It is important that your keyword appears naturally in your post/page with a density of 1% – 3% as a general guideline.
How to rank my business on Google #8 -The page should have contents of minimum 300 words.
This is simple to achieve if you are passionate about your niche that you have chosen for your business.
Google dislike post/pages with thin contents.
Google like post/pages that provide its reader valuable contents.
If the post/pages get shared in social media, it has a positive effect on the ranking too.
How to rank my business on Google #9 – There are outbound links in the page.
It is beneficial to add outbound links to other relevant website pages within your post/page.
This is also an indicator that you are providing relevant and quality resources to your visitor.
This could let your reader regards that your post/page is of quality and may results in sharing of your post/page, provide a backlink to it or even bookmark it for later reference.
Remember I mentioned about the off-page SEO? This is where all positive spiral effect comes in.
With more shares and backlinks to your post/page. Your ranking will rise significantly!
How to rank my business on Google #10 – Scores fairly well in the Flesch Reading Ease test.
Not just your content be of quality and valuable. It is important that your post/page is fairly easy to read without many grammatical or spelling errors.
Similar to above point, if your readers have difficulty in understanding you, will they come back again?
Worst, if they just close down your post/page without exploring further, it will affect your page’s bounce rate.
With high bounce rate, ranking will fall as a result.
How to rank my business on Google? – Last but not least
“Edmund, how do I keep track of all these while I am writing my contents?”, you might ask.
Fortunately, there is a free WordPress plugin (Yeost SEO) available to check your Flesch Reading Ease and the above 9 points.
You can use Grammarly to check your grammar mistakes on the go while creating contents.
Thus, you can just focus on your writing of contents. The SEO part could be easily taken care of by them.
Most importantly, you must know that even if you apply the 10 points above diligently, some of your keywords may still not rank high due to high competition.
It is recommended to do your keyword research again and fine tune. Never give up!
Well, that’s all for sharing my own experience and learning from Wealthy Affiliate.
Wishing you the best in your business ranking!
Edmund, thanks for explaining so clearly how to rank my business on Google. I knew some of this, but you showed brilliantly how it all fits together, plus your suggestion of the Yoast plugin saved the day. I’d much rather focus on content creation and let the plugin do its thing.
I’m a big fan of Wealthy Affiliate too and please to see you recommend them.
Hi G.C.Horton, thanks for your comment.
The points mentioned here are some simple SEO basics and I am hoped that by putting them together will let anyone new to SEO see an overall picture of its implementation. Using plugin and tools to aid us definitely save us a lot of time!
I happy to know that you are a great fan of Wealthy Affiliate too!
I sincerely wish you Success!
Hi there. My name is John, I like how you wrote this article using a practical example. Once I started, I could not stop thinking how the points here can apply to my own business.
All the points here are easy to follow and I am glad that you recommended a plugin to make everything even simpler.
Keep up the excellent work!
Thanks for sharing, Edmund!
Hi John, thanks for your comment.
I am glad that this article has created values for you and your business. There are more advanced SEO techniques taught at Wealthy Affiliate University.
You can create a free* Starter account and take a look at some of the training and connect with the community there. I am sure they will definitely help you too.
Wishing you the best!
I use most of the points you have covered to get good rankings in Google for the pages on my website. I am not sure I agree with point 6 entirely.
On my site I have 3 pages targeting travel accessories, but the contents on each post are very different. The main targeted keyword is in the title, URL, first paragraph etc., followed by a hyphen then the secondary keyword, which makes each one different.
So for example “Primary long-tail keyword – Secondary long-tail keyword” would be the overall keyword for each post. This does work OK because 2 of my posts are on page 1 and the third is high on page 2 working it’s way up.
One of the guys who commented in the “keyword cannibalisation” post does mention that this technique works as long as each post targets different topics.
Thanks for your very useful post.
Hi Neil, thanks so much for your comment and sharing.
Using your technique of “primary long-tail keyword – secondary long-tail keyword” you have great results in ranking!
Thank you for creating values here, I have learned something new from you today and I believe any readers of this article will too.
Wishing you the best, Neil!
Hi Edmund,
Very nice article on how to rank my business on Google and there is something new for me to learn. You have disclosed 10 factors but what you would suggest the prime ranking factors. Do they all are important or a combination of 3 or more can also do the job for us.
Again thanks for writing such a great article.
Hi, Khan!
Thank you for your comment!
I am glad that this article has created values for you. I would say all these 10 basic steps are important to help your article to achieve higher rankings.
Most importantly, your article should have valuable contents for the reader.
To check all these is made simple using the Yeost SEO plugin which I highly recommend.
Wishing you the best!
Hi, Edmund!
Great article you have here I find it very useful and I actually learned some new things. I didn’t realize how important the use of headers in the beginning, but I am starting to now.
I notice when I go to other peoples sites and or when I am just looking for information on the web I like to see the headings bigger than the text so I can get a gist of what I am about to read.
It works great along with pictures. SEO is really important for the long run too, that is ideally how you can rank in Google and other search engines as well as Bing and Yahoo.
It does take a lot of work and also patience. Being patient is the hard part for me expecting to see results fast.
Hi, Brandon! Thank you for your comment!
Yes, most people will glance through a web page when they first arrive. The headings are definitely the first thing to let them know roughly what the article is about and capture their attention.
And pictures do tell a thousand word, don’t they. 🙂
You are absolutely right that SEO takes a lot of work and patience. Most people do not understand that and give up when they do not see their results quickly.
Passion, Patience and Persistence are the keys to your Online Success!
Wishing you the best!
Hi, Edmund!
There are many very useful details relevant for a good ranking, so many thanks for this. I am unfamiliar with the formula in the item 10.
Where does it come from? Do you really use it? It looks annoying to me to count syllables, sentences etc. Is it really necessary? Thank you.
Hi Jovo, you are most welcome and thank you for your questions.
Flesch Reading Ease is a standard used by many and the formula comes from there. It is annoying too if an article is not readable and I believe you would not even want to read the article.
Fortunately, in this technologically advanced age, you do not have to count them manually.
You can use a free WordPress plugin Yeost SEO to perform all the 10 checks I mentioned in this article. 🙂
Wishing you the best!
Hi Edmund,
Your article is pure gold. I have gotten answers in many aspects of the ranking process and detected some of the stuff I have been overlooking for the longest time.
I will definitely bookmark your site and use it as a guide in my overall SEO efforts. Thank you for posting this!
Hi George,
You are most welcome! I am glad that this article has created values for you. 🙂
Wishing you the best!
Hi, Edmund.
I’ve come across a lot of articles in my time on this subject and they all seem to make it sounds as easy as one, two, three! This is never the case unfortunately.
The way you have laid out this article gave me confidence to take on ranking again – these steps seems a lot more realistic than other efforts I’ve seen out there. Thanks for the info!
Hi, Chris.
You are most welcome and I am glad that this article has created values for you!
Wishing you the best!