How to Increase Search Engine Ranking in Google On and Off-Page

Written by Devin Sizemore

SEO

September 18, 2017

It’s clear that search engine optimization, or SEO, is one of the most important things you can do for your website or business. It draws people in and helps you target people outside of your immediate audience. If you don’t know the basics of SEO and you plan to have a significant presence online, you’ll need to learn SEO tactics to stand out.

But, if you want to know how to improve your search engine ranking on Google, your best bet is to go beyond basic, everyday SEO methods. There’s so much more to SEO than keywords. Think of them as the cornerstone that almost every SEO tactic relies on. But, you need to understand what to do with them to get your practices to work for you.

These on-page and off-page SEO techniques will help you see how you can use SEO techniques on your website and throughout the internet to help your site rank in Google.  

How to Increase Google Search Engine Ranking with On-Page Techniques

When thinking about SEO, on-page factors aren’t the first thing that come to mind. We usually think about building links to our site, but on-page SEO plays an important role as well. On-page techniques are things that you can do on your website to improve your search ranking. The following methods will teach you to go above and beyond using keywords in your content and pages and, instead, will go deeper to help you do what Google loves to see in its top-ranking sites.

Optimize Titles, Headings, and Meta Descriptions

It’s incredibly important to look beyond optimizing your written content and also focus on your titles, headings and sub-headings, and meta descriptions. These are all things Google looks for when determining how to increase search engine ranking in Google for your site. If you forget to add keywords into them, you’re missing a golden opportunity for Google to find you easier.

All three of these elements should have your main keyword included. If your keyword is “best mattresses for side sleepers,” you can create a title like, “Top 10 Best Mattresses for Side Sleepers to Wake Up Refreshed”. Use the main keyword in at least one heading and your meta description and sprinkle other keywords throughout each.

Hit the Sweet Spot of Keyword Density

Keywords are the backbone of SEO, but it is possible to overuse them, which can hurt your ranking more than help it. Keywords help Google, and other search engines, learn what your site’s focus is so it can display your site in relevant search queries. But, content littered with the same keywords multiple times and close together may cause Google to ban your site, which can be a difficult – or even impossible – process to reverse.

Google equates high keyword densities to spam sites that use shady practices to rank within its search engine. Unfortunately, there’s no magic keyword density percentage to target for your content. But, a Searchmetrics report analyzed top-ranking pages and found that the higher the rank, the lower the keyword density – some had 0.6% or less. It’s better to focus on using your keywords in the best context instead of stuffing them into places that don’t make sense.

Link to Your Own Content

Linking to other sites, known as external linking, is helpful in establishing the authority of your content. Internal links, or linking to pages within your own site, is equally as important for showing Google what your pages are about. When one page of your site, like a blog post, links to another page using one of your targeted keywords, you’re essentially telling Google, “This page is all about this topic,” which helps you rank for that keyword.

A good way to create some strong internal links is through cornerstone content. Your site should have three to four long-form, extremely in-depth posts that link to several other pages. If your site is about men’s fashion, for example, you can have one cornerstone page about men’s fashion for each season, linking to important blog posts or products on your site.  

How to Increase Google Search Engine Ranking with Off-Page Techniques

Off-page SEO techniques can be a bit more difficult to master and may even make you uncomfortable when you’re just starting out. Why? Because learning how to improve search engine ranking on Google with off-page techniques means that you’ll have to engage with other sites outside of your own to create a presence. These methods are another form of marketing and promotion and include ways to improve your website’s ranking without stepping foot in your website.

Social Media Presence and Engagement

social media seoYes, your presence and engagement on social media indirectly affect your site’s ranking! Quality followers on Twitter, Pinterest, and other networks can help you rank in Google. The best way to grow followers organically is to be as present as possible on your accounts, asking and answering questions to increase engagement. And, when you create interesting content for your site that gets shared on social media, you automatically get quality backlinks.

Don’t forget to look beyond typical social networks, though. Quora is also a great way to link to your site as you answer questions with your expertise. And discussion forums within your industry can further help you establish yourself – and your site – as an authority.

Engage with Other Sites

Did you know that one of the keys to ranking in Google is engaging with your competitors? If you aren’t yet sure who they are, you can use our keyword tool to help you search for competitors based on keywords, SEO techniques, and more. In the world of digital marketing, your competitors can also be your biggest helpers.

Guest blogging on other sites in your industry – your direct competitors – may help drive traffic to your site and establish you and your business as authorities. Ensure that you post on highly reputable sites and create only helpful and engaging content. If someone finds your post helpful, there’s a good chance he or she will want to learn more about you and your business from your bio.

And when you link from your guest post to your site, you now have an authority backlink that will make Google happy.

Use Content Types Other Than Writing

Helpful images and infographics and videos are becoming just as important to master as content. In our must-have-the-information-I-need-now world, these forms of media can be incredibly helpful to those looking for quick tips, especially when they’re on mobile devices. It may be time to utilize social networks that you didn’t give much thought to before, like YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram.

Infographics perform especially well on Pinterest. How-to videos on YouTube, depending on your industry, can quickly become popular without much help from you. And videos can even rank in Google, so don’t forget to share a link to your site in the video and in the caption so new viewers can find you. Create some funny office Snaps on Snapchat to give your audience a peek into your team’s behind-the-scenes personalities.

Conclusion: Improve Search Engine Rank in Google

With so many options for improving search engine ranking, there’s no excuse not to try. With access to your top competitors from Long Tail Pro, you can study your competitors and create your on-page and off-page strategies that will be even bigger and better than theirs. It’s important to look beyond the usual SEO methods and start optimizing your presence outside of your site to help it rank.

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15 Comments

  1. Michael Curry

    Great article – lots of actionable points!

    Reply
    • Long Tail Pro Team

      Glad the article has helped!

      Reply
  2. Md. Anwar Sadat

    Wow! That’s really great way I will must apply into my next contents. Actually SEO is a great technique. If you can apply it perfectly then you are the boss. Otherwise your content will never be in the number page 1 of google search ranking.

    Thanks a lot to show us the great ways of on page and off page SEO. Carry on your great direction to enlightend us.

    Reply
    • Long Tail Pro Team

      Thanks Md. Anwar Sadat!

      Reply
  3. Phil

    Yes, it is really important to make sure you optimize title, headings, and the beginning of your text with your keyword.

    Reply
  4. Jerry Marcellus

    Amazing article, I just started my blog so this information is really valuable to increasing my blog website traffic.

    Thanks again for sharing on the page and off the page SEO tips. Keep the great content coming.

    Reply
  5. Aman Gola

    Will definitely try these

    Reply
  6. Diana D'Souza

    You’re right, it is important to look beyond the usual SEO methods and thanks to your article, I have now learned a few new ways to improve the SEO of my site and hopefully rank faster on Google. Many thanks for putting this information together. Diana

    Reply
  7. Dave

    Awesome Post! Already following a part of the list but using another type of content like infographic is something I learnt new today.

    Thanks,
    Dave

    Reply
  8. Maxwell

    I’m just starting out, learning S.E.O. as I go, and wanting to increase traffic for my electrical business. It’s not easy for beginners but I guess that’s what it’s all about.

    Reply
  9. Maxwell

    I’m just starting out, learning S.E.O. as I go, and wanting to increase traffic for my electrical business. It’s not easy for beginners but I guess that’s what it’s all about.

    Reply
  10. Hire-A-PI

    Nice tips. I haven’t done much off-page SEO just on-page (using LTP of course). I still need to learn off-page. Being a social retard I have to break out of my bubble.

    Reply
  11. Pawan Sahani

    I have been implementing some of these techniques on my blog. But, off-page SEO is really hard for beginners.

    Reply
    • Fred

      It’s not really too hard for beginners – it’s just a lot of work. When you’re a big biz/etc. and you have a lot of money to spend on SEO, you can outsource all of it, but when you’re starting out you have to do it all yourself.

      Reply
  12. Barakha

    It’s the best strategy for full-time bloggers to get organic traffic with or without SEO. I actually don’t concentrate that much on SEO other than catchy titles, giving attention to sections of quality content, and maybe it includes a header or two in the blog post itself.

    All you need to notice from this kind of articles is what I & most of the others newbies focusing on the SEO link-building. I have seen many bloggers spending time on different ways of SEO link building instead of providing the value to the content and its social promotions. You may call it ignoring the Google, but we all know that the Google bot doesn’t ignore anchored dofollow or nofollow backlinks to calculate your PageRank.

    With my experience, about 65% of my traffic comes from search engines, & the rest is from social sites that include referrals & direct traffic. Communicating with similar kind of blogger is the best way to get traffic. It’s just like going to relevant sites comes under the micro niche site to you and ultimately making you get the direct quality traffic to you. Anyhow, it will then affect our keyword ranking and PageRank according to the Google guidelines. To get higher search rankings, you need not only focus on SEO but other factors to make you drive more attention to readers online. Thanks for this page, that will help me a lot and for other newbies too…

    Reply

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