Hundreds of factors could amended your Google rankings. But immoderate are much hard to power than others.

For that reason, if you privation to fertile higher, you request to beryllium methodical. Start by moving connected the casual things that are wrong your control, past determination connected to much challenging things if needed.

Here’s the process:

If you already cognize which keyword you privation to fertile higher for, skip this step. Otherwise, you request to find a leafage that could fertile higher for its people keyword. 

Here’s an casual mode to do this:

1. Paste your domain into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
2. Go to the Organic keywords report
3. Filter for rankings successful positions 2–10

You should present spot each keywords you fertile for connected the archetypal leafage of Google, but not successful presumption #1. All you person to bash is take one.

Here’s a tip: look for your main keyword targets for the corresponding page.

For example, our usher to learning SEO ranks successful presumption #10 for “how agelong does it instrumentality to larn SEO.” But this isn’t the superior people keyword for the page, truthful it’s apt not the champion 1 to effort to amended rankings for.

Search intent is the “why” down the query. It’s wherefore 90% of the top-ranking results for “air fryer” are blog posts and not income pages. Google understands that searchers aren’t acceptable to buy. They privation to comparison products.

You request to align your leafage with hunt intent to basal the champion accidental astatine ranking.

We learned this the hard mode erstwhile trying to fertile for “backlink checker.” 

Here’s the leafage we archetypal created: 

You tin spot that it explains however to cheque a site’s backlinks with Ahrefs and offers searchers a free trial. 

This performed OK and ranked for years successful positions #6–10—but it ne'er cracked the top five.

In 2018, we realized this was a hunt intent issue. All the top-ranking pages for “backlink checker” were free tools. 

To lick this, we added a escaped instrumentality to the page. Almost overnight, the leafage changeable to #1—and it’s been determination ever since.

To spot however good your leafage aligns with intent, cheque the top-ranking pages for the three Cs:

1. Content benignant – Are they chiefly blog posts, product, category, landing pages, oregon thing else? 
2. Content format – Are they chiefly tutorials, listicles, how-to guides, recipes, escaped tools, oregon thing else?
3. Content space – Is determination a ascendant selling point, similar debased prices oregon however casual it is?

For example, each the top-ranking pages for “pancake recipe” are blog posts with recipes. And the ascendant selling constituent is however casual they are to make.

Even if your contented aligns with hunt intent, you whitethorn not beryllium giving searchers everything they want. There whitethorn beryllium subtopics they’re looking for and expecting you to cover.

For example, astir top-ranking results for “how to constitute a property release” are how-to blog posts. This paints a wide representation of hunt intent.

But if you look astatine these posts, astir of them see a template oregon links to templates.

Google apt knows that searchers worth posts with templates much than those without, truthful you should astir apt see 1 if you privation to fertile higher for this keyword.

Here are a mates of ways to find subtopics to see successful your content:

1. Eyeball the top-ranking pages for commonalities – Pay peculiar attraction to subheadings. 
2. Find keywords top-ranking pages fertile for that you don’t – These often representation to subtopics. 

Here’s however to bash the second successful Ahrefs’ Site Explorer:

1. Paste your leafage into Site Explorer
2. Go to the Content Gap report
3. Paste successful a fewer top-ranking URLs

For example, here’s what we get if we plug successful our station astir creating a go-to-market strategy. 

Freshness is simply a query-dependent Google ranking factor. If searchers are apt to worth updated content, Google ranks caller pages higher. 

For example, radical worth freshness erstwhile searching for “top google searches.” They privation the astir fashionable Google searches close now, not 10 years ago. That’s wherefore rankings and postulation for our leafage driblet erstwhile the contented becomes stale and leap backmost up erstwhile we update the page.

If you’re unsure whether Google values freshness, cheque the dates connected top-ranking pages. 

For example, each top-ranking results for “best headphones” were updated recently. But galore top-ranking results for “best parks successful london” haven’t been updated for months oregon adjacent years. This doesn’t substance due to the fact that it’s not similar caller parks are built daily.

If freshness is important for your keyword, you whitethorn fertile higher by refreshing your page. 

Making the intent and relevance of your leafage wide to Google and searchers is the occupation of on-page SEO. It’s the icing connected the barroom that highlights the enactment you enactment into matching intent and covering the taxable in full.

Here are a fewer elemental ways to amended your on-page SEO:

• Use H1–H6 tags to operation your contented hierarchically – Google recommends this. Wrap your rubric successful an H1, subheadings successful H2s, sub-subheadings successful H3s, etc.
• Use a short, descriptive URL – Google says elemental URLs convey contented information. 
• Write a compelling rubric tag and meta description – This whitethorn assistance you get much clicks and nonstop affirmative signals astir your contented to Google.
• Optimize your images – Google says to usage little but descriptive filenames and alt text. It’s besides worthy compressing images to amended leafage speed—which is simply a ranking factor.
• Polish your copy – Google says users bask contented that’s good written and casual to follow. Use abbreviated paragraphs, bully grammar, and proven copywriting techniques to support readers engaged.

Learn more: On-Page SEO: Complete Beginner’s Guide

Internal links are links from 1 leafage connected your website to another. They’re important due to the fact that they’re however PageRank flows astir your site. In different words, interior links boost a page’s authorization and archer Google it’s important.

Here’s an casual mode to find applicable interior nexus opportunities:

1. Sign up for a escaped Ahrefs Webmaster Tools account
2. Crawl your website with Site Audit
3. Go to the Internal nexus opportunities tool
4. Set the people URL to the leafage you privation to fertile higher

This instrumentality takes each the keywords your people leafage ranks for successful the apical 100 and finds mentions of them connected your site. It past suggests them arsenic contextual interior nexus opportunities.

For example, accidental we acceptable our usher to gathering a contented selling strategy arsenic the people page. In that case, determination are 13 imaginable interior nexus opportunities. 

Here’s 1 of them:

Here, it’s suggesting that we internally nexus the operation “content selling strategy” successful our database of content selling tools.

Internally linking this operation whitethorn assistance our station to fertile higher. 

If you don’t spot immoderate results successful this report, it’s either because:

1. Your people leafage doesn’t fertile successful the apical 100 for immoderate keywords.
2. You don’t notation immoderate of the keywords it ranks for connected your site.

Either way, you tin find opportunities successful Google by searching for site:domain.com "[keyword]".

For example, determination are plentifulness of mentions of “content selling strategy” connected our blog.

Having galore akin pages astir the aforesaid happening is shooting yourself successful the foot. That’s due to the fact that backlinks get dispersed betwixt pages and are a ranking factor. So you tin extremity up with galore anemic pages alternatively of 1 beardown capable to rank.

To lick this problem, redirect weaker pages astir a taxable to the strongest one. This consolidates backlinks and creates a leafage much susceptible of ranking.

To find pages connected your tract astir the keyword you privation to fertile higher for, hunt Google for site:domain.com [keyword].

For example, our tract has 2 precise akin pages astir meta keywords. We person a blog station explaining meta keywords and a glossary leafage that does the same thing. 

Redirecting 1 of these to the different to consolidate backlinks whitethorn assistance america fertile higher for this keyword. It creates 1 stronger leafage from 2 weaker pages.

Backlinks are 1 of Google’s astir important ranking factors. Andrey Lipattsev, a hunt prime elder strategist astatine Google, confirmed this in 2016. 

Unfortunately, gathering high-quality backlinks is 1 of the astir challenging parts of SEO. This is due to the fact that it’s not thing you tin afloat control. You person to make thing worthy of earning backlinks, past person radical to nexus to you. 

This is wherefore it’s the last measurement successful our process. 

Here’s a bully starting constituent if you’re caller to nexus building:

1. Paste a competing leafage into Site Explorer
2. Go to the Backlinks report
3. Look for backlinks you whitethorn beryllium capable to replicate

For example, let’s accidental we privation to physique links to our beginner’s usher to SEO. If we hunt Google for competing pages with the Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar installed, we’ll find that 1 has links from implicit 14K referring domains.

According to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, here’s 1 of the pages it got a backlink from recently:

Looking astatine the referring page, it seems the nexus comes from a conception listing 3 of the champion SEO guides. 

If we scope retired to the writer and present our beginner’s usher to SEO, there’s a accidental they whitethorn adhd it to their page.

Rank tracking is the lone mode to cognize if your efforts to fertile higher connected Google are working. 

Although you tin bash this for escaped by searching connected Google, it isn’t usually reliable. This is due to the fact that factors similar determination and hunt past tin impact wherever you spot a leafage ranking. Using a fertile tracking instrumentality similar Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker is overmuch much accurate.

You tin way 10K keywords successful this tool, but you lone usually request to way the main keyword for each page. 

Hit the graph caret adjacent to immoderate keyword successful Rank Tracker to spot its ranking advancement over time. 

Ranking precocious connected Google for 1 keyword is great, but ranking precocious for galore keywords is adjacent better. So erstwhile you’ve followed this process for 1 keyword, repetition it for more.

You’ll fertile higher for hundreds of keywords and get tons of integrated postulation earlier you know it.

Final thoughts

You tin bash galore things to fertile higher connected Google, but it makes consciousness to commencement with the casual ones that are wrong your control. If those don’t determination the needle, put successful much challenging things similar nexus building.

Give maine a outcry on Twitter if you person immoderate questions.