Do You Want More Traffic? Rank #1 on Google

Most Important Tactics To Ranking #1 Rankings On Google

Nobody ever says that they have enough traffic, right?

So the key question for any website/online business owner is quite simple - how do you get more traffic in Google?

With over 200 ranking factors, known and unknown in the confidential Google algorithm, covering things like trust, social signals, and user-interaction it can be a minefield knowing where to invest your time. Sometimes it can be hard enough just knowing where to begin!

The truth is, you simple won't ever be able to hit all 200 factors right away. It's going to be a moving target.

Should you focus on everything - NO! You'll spread yourself too thin, and not optimise for any factor at all. This will simply dilute your potential in search engine rankings.

You're going to want to focus your time investment and efforts in factors that you can control that are going to have a real impact on your traffic.

Educated Guesses Are The Best Tactic

Let's face it. You'll never ever know the secret to Google's algorithm. It's not public information, so you're always operating on a best guess approach. This doesn't mean that you should blindly approach the subject of SEO. You're going to use verifiable anecdotal evidence to work on the most educated approach to increases your online traffic.

Google doesn't rank a site from just one factor, it blends, or 'stacks' a number of factors to determine a ranking factor.

Domain Ranking Factors

Positives

Exact Match Domain (EMD)
Keywords In Domain
Domain History

Negatives

Private Whois Data
Penalised Whois Owner
Country TLD Extension

These are the real basics. Although EMD's are no longer a major ranking factor, you're going to want a website with as close to the search term you're wanting to rank, featuring the keyword in the domain.

Also, Google wants to rank legitimate businesses, that are established for the long haul, and have nothing to hide. You're going to rank higher if you don't have domain privacy enabled, and your domain is registered for several years - not just for a year.

Page Level Ranking Factors

Positives

URL Contains Keyword
Title Tag Contains Keyword
Meta Description Contains Keyword

Negatives

Duplicate Meta Descriptions
Duplicate Title Tags
Underscores In Title Tags

Written content on your site should indicate clearly to Google what the content is about and be roughly 2000 words in length. Longer articles are shown to increase:

- Engagement
- Links
- Social Signals

By correctly marking up your articles to contain the correct architecture when you write, with clearly defined URLs, titles, meta descriptions and use of keywords in H1, and subsequent long tail variations in other headers, as well as within the body of the content will ensure Google understands the content and helps with a number of ranking factors in the SERPs.

Supporting your written content with mixed media (images and videos) goes a long way to establishing quality content scoring with Google - so ensure you analyse and mark up your media correctly and appropriately; describing accurately what your content is about.

Routinely update and refresh your content. Ensure it is optimised, current and accurate. Cross link important content within your site - internal links do play an important factor in helping Google understand and rank your content in search engines.

Server Speed

Yes - this is becoming of greater importance. As Google wants to show the best websites to their audience in their organic SERPs, a website that is fast to load with fewer errors in the code, will rank higher than a site that is slower to load and has less optimal code.

Continuity Across The Web

Google wants to rank legitimate businesses with authority and trust. This means that if you have social media sites, Google Business and so on, the information about your business - name, address, contact details and so on should be accurate and congruent across the entire web. Being consistent and official in your branding and business details remains a sensible and sane tactic for developing trust ranking with your audience and Google.

Critical pages such as Contact, About, Privacy Policy and so on all do play a role in trust. Likewise, proper support for HTTS SSL secured domains and aged domains play a role in the trust flow for your website in Google's eyes.

Backlink Ranking Factors

Often grossly misunderstood and abused - backlinking strategies used to be one of the main, or only ranking factors that people focussed on. In saying that, too many people did a poor job, or carry across the strategies that worked many years ago to current and wonder why they are not working, or worse, delivering site wide penalties.

Positives

Number Of Links
Anchor Text
Link Title

Negatives

Bad Neighbourhoods
Same C-Class
Guest Posting

Google has enough data from inception to current to have a clear understanding of how real humans interact, share and link to websites across the web. It is easier than ever for Google to spot purchased, fake or engineered back link portfolios.

Natural backlinks, with relevancy and diversity is the way to go. Especially those that are coming from aged, authority domains and on topic.

One back link from a highly trusted and relevant domain is worth a thousand times more than a plethora of irrelevant linking comment spam links! In fact those old spammy tactics could get your site quickly penalised!

An important note on link velocity - Google tracks how frequently and how fast you obtain links and cross references this to your site traffic. If you're somehow (purchasing) a slew of backlinks, and your traffic doesn't justify the same figures with their data, or you're buying bundles of links in high velocity then taking a break - Google will spot this as a clear violation of natural back linking and you could be doing yourself some harm.

Link acquisition should be more organic, natural and scheduled - not blasted in high velocity batches...

User Engagement Ranking Factors

Positives

Page Level SERP Click Through Rate
Domain Level SERP Click Through Rate
Dwell Time / Pogo Sticking

Negatives

Page Level SERP Click Through Rate
Domain Level SERP Click Through Rate
Dwell Time / Pogo Sticking

Interesting content that gets a high level of click through rate in search engines is going to rank higher.

Similarly, if your domain in general is achieving a high click through rate across the board, you'll have a higher chance of out ranking a competitor.

If visitors click through to your site, but have a high bounce rate back to the SERPs, this is going to hurt you. Your content needs to be specific and highly engaging to retain customers on your website. Offering great advice, value and something that attracts and retains your customers on your site is critical. Similarly, websites that have a high return customer rate will rank higher than those with a higher proportion of first time visitations.

Social Signals Ranking Factors

Positives

Tweets
Facebook Shares
Facebook Comments

Negatives

Negative Social Velocity

Tweets and Facebook shares are by far the most dominant social signal influence available to a website owner. The more tweets and Facebook shares you have, the more popular Google will rank you in the search engines over any other social signal.

Just like link building, your social sharing campaigns should be natural, with naturally progressive velocity in-line with your site traffic, or you'll quickly be noticed as trying to game the system.

A word to note - if you purchased 1000 tweets today, and in 3 days 900 tweets were removed, then that is a clear and noticeable negative social signal velocity that will harm your rankings and positions in the SERPs.

As your social velocity drops off, so does your ranking position.

Ranking High In Google Search - The Conclusion

As you can see, a large portion of this article is dedicated to authority, trust and organic growth.

Now, more than ever, it's harder to cheat the system. Harder even for a legitimate business in it for the long haul, to achieve any quick wins.

Your ideal strategy is to build a highly trusted, authoritative domain, with a lot of valuable and relevant content for your niche audience - consistently.

Building a high value amount of fresh content, regularly updated, and properly formatted will go a long way for winning your favour in Google, as well as with your audience.

Become a leader in your industry, share your knowledge and share it well structured and consistently. Be congruent across the web and interact with your audience socially. Google will reward you for quality and consistency, as well as patience.

A Word On Traffic and Retention

Having traffic, and lots of it is pointless! It's pointless if you're not doing anything with that traffic to retain them and nurture them.

That is where MagnetMonster step in.

Listen, if you're flooded with traffic, but you have no strategy in place to retain them, nurture your relationship with that audience and eventually sell to them - then what is the purpose.

It's like trying to fill a sink basin with water, leaving the plug out and pushing the tap to full and hoping for the best. You NEED TO PUT THE PLUG IN and watch the water level rise!

Here at MagnetMonster, what we do best, is optimise your return on investment. We are dedicated to strategies that help you capture your audiences attention as soon as they land on your site, and build your long term relationship and retention with your new prospects & leads.

It's no good focussing all of your attention on simply achieving more traffic. You're going to need to dedicate just as much time and effort into converting those prospects into leads and sales.

You're going to need a lead magnet ...

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