Improve Google Ranking 2024: The Ultimate Guide

You already produce a lot of content to improve Google ranking, and you know the basics of search engine optimization, but still, success is still missing. Are you more confused with a lot of information on the Internet than that they would bring you something?

In this article, I would like to create clarity and show you step by step how you can improve your rankings on Google sustainably and in the long term.

With my strategies I was able to win over 7 million monthly visitors, so let me show you how it works. If you still have any questions about the article, just let’s speak without obligation and I give you a look from the outside on your website.

The Essentials in Brief

• There is a complicated algorithm behind Google Ranking. Whether a page runs or does not run depends on many different factors.
• There are no real step-by-step instructions to improve your SEO, but there are still a few basic optimizations that can be carried out.
• One should differentiate between short-term and long-term optimizations. SEO is usually a long-term marketing method, i.e. quick successes often fail to materialize.

How do I Improve my Google Ranking?

The Google search engine has developed very much in recent years and can now very precisely evaluate the search intention of users thanks to artificial intelligence. Google knows exactly which search results a visitor wants to see in a certain keyword or phrase.

Read Also: Master the Art of Crafting Powerful Eye-catching Headlines for Your Blog Posts

This development is a logical conclusion somewhere because Google’s goal is to show the visitor the most relevant and best result.

In this article, I will give you all the tricks and tricks from practice. I deal with my SEO campaigns from other companies and customers every day.

Be sure to take a closer look at my recommendations for SEO courses – SEO is absolutely no rocket science and can be learned very quickly with the right instructions.

Improve SEO: Everything you should know about the Google Ranking

Before we can take care of any practical things, we should first roughly understand the theory. How does the ranking on Google work? I would like to answer this rather dry part as short and short as possible – especially of course also easy to understand and understandable.

How does the Google Algorithm work?

Nobody can know exactly how Google Algorithm works. On the one hand, the system has now become so complex, on the other hand, this is of course also a strictly kept company secret.

In principle, however, Google is all about relevance. A user enters a search query on Google and wants to achieve something – mostly information or an action (e.g. “Buy shoes”).

Google’s goal is to deliver the best possible result for its search query. For this, the algorithm comes into play: it sorts the thousands of websites using many different factors in a certain order.

The factors based on which Google determines the individual rankings are even different from search query to search query. Say there are no longer ranking factors X, Y, and Z, but they can be individual. In principle, however, the ranking factors can be found on 5 levels:

1. The search intention/relevance
2. Domain authority (Domain Authority)
3. Quality (and topicality) of the content
4. Side structure
5. Technology

You should always focus on all 5 areas, not on one. In the course of the article, I will of course continue the areas even further.

How do I check my current rankings on Google?

If your website has been online for some time, then you have certainly already received some rankings on Google. Before we start Google Rankings, we have to analyze the status quo intensively. You don’t need expensive software for this, you can simply use the Google Search Console for it.

Google provides this tool free of charge to all website operators. The tool’s data are quite trustworthy because the content is drawn directly from the Google System.

In principle, the Google Search Console is very easy to use and has valuable potential but also errors can be found. Google shows you for which subpages and for which keywords you already get impressions. At the same time, the click rate and average position in the search results are given.

A subpage that already receives quite a few impressions but is not yet clicked so often can be brought forward quickly by targeted optimization and thus direct more visitors to your website.

The Google Search Console is much more suitable for checking the current rankings than Google Analytics. You should also implement this correctly so that you can track the number of your visitors or other factors correctly.

If you don’t have set up Google Search Console for your project, you can of course also use other tools such as Ahrefs or Sistrix. When I analyze projects, I usually use a combination of the tools just listed.

What basics in the area of ​​search engine optimization should I know?

First of all, I would like to go into a few basics of SEO optimization. It is essential to internalize these basics and to understand the concept behind SEO. In the future, it has become and will become increasingly important to tackle the SEO process of a website very strategically.

Therefore, you have to understand the basics behind the system and you can’t just start blindly somewhere. Of course, you are also welcome to jump directly into the practical part – I leave that completely to you.

Each underside should be considered individually

Many beginners keep making mistakes and consider their websites as an entire construct. But what ultimately runs on Google are the subpages. The visitor ends up through an underside on your website, which does not always have to be the start page.

Important principle

Google evaluates all subpages of your website individually. Each underside can rank for many keywords, depending on the scope of your content. Nevertheless, you should only set a specific purpose for each underside, i.e. a target keyword.

Ideally, this keyword has a certain search volume or plays a central role for your company. Occasionally, this type of keyword is also referred to as the so-called “seed keyword”.

On the other hand, there is also your domain. Ultimately, this is also considered an entire system by Google. A domain can have a different amount of trust: Amazon.de, for example, is a very well-known brand with a certain reputation and is therefore always preferred by Google.

The domain bundles all subpages under itself. The start page serves as the first point of contact. In this respect, the homepage is important in that many other websites usually refer to it. We will treat the topic of Linkjuice even more intensively later.

One page can rank for any number of keywords

It is the case that a subpage can rank for any number of keywords in the top 100 from Google. Therefore, please find out about Longtail keywords. In general, you must structure your texts so that a ranking for hundreds of keywords is made possible.

How this works I will show you in my article about SEO texts.

Nevertheless, you should assign each underside a special focus keyword. For this purpose, for example, you can use the so-called keyword mapping.

Every URL assigns you a specific keyword or a topic for which it should later rank on Google. This is important, otherwise, you will quickly lose the goal of the underside and your content will not match the search intent of the user.

An underside should (ideally) meet a fixed purpose. It serves to generate organic visitors, then she should be assigned the main keyword.

Your content must be relevant to the focus keyword. So you should always ask yourself very carefully which content the users want to see at the keyword and write the content based on this.

Excursus: Keyword Cannibalization

Bloggers or other publishers in particular who repeatedly write about very similar or relevant topics often have the problem of so-called keyword can mate.

This arises when at least two articles are geared towards related keywords or similar search intentions. While you used to create a single underside for almost every keyword, so-called holistic is crucial today.

Keywords must be summarized into clusters and a corresponding subpage must be created for every search intention of the topic. One is talking about Keyword Kannibalization when two sub-pages rose for the same keyword and thereby hinder each other.

In my article about WordPress SEO, I also go into it.

User signals are an essential ranking factor

Google is getting better at recognizing how users behave on your subpage. The worst thing that can happen to you is a so-called short click.

The user reaches your site via Google and jumps off within a few seconds because he did not find what he wants. A short click occurs frequently when the search intent is not completely hit.

Example: Someone wants to buy red soccer shoes, but ends up on a target page that only has brown soccer shoes on offer.

Positive user signals are, for example, an interaction (parts of the article, comment, click on different elements) or the length of stay. If the user introduces himself to a newsletter or fills out a form, then you did everything right and Google rates it positively.

It is therefore particularly important that you measure the behavior of your visitors in the long term in any way. Tracking usually only makes sense from a certain number of visitors but should be implemented at the beginning.

Possible tools with which tracking is made easier:

• Google Analytics
• Google Tag Manager
• Hotjar

Already at the Search Engine Result Page (SERP), you can make sure that your potential visitors feel addressed. We discuss the so-called meta titles and meta descriptions even more precisely later.

In SERP SEO – what you should consider in user signals

As already mentioned, Google attaches great importance to user behavior. If a user in the SERPs (search results) clicks on a result and stays there long before he returns to Google, this is a sign of good quality.

However, if he clicks on a website and jumps back to the SERPs (pogo-sticking or Shortcklick), this is certainly one of the worst signs for a website.

You can even check the click rate on your website by serving the Google Search Console. As a reference, you can accept certain values ​​and compare these values ​​with yours – so you can rank 3 for an important keyword and have a click rate of 10 %, You can compare it 10 % with the reference values ​​and conclude.

The decisive factor for a good click rate is an appealing meta title and an appealing meta description.

Backlinks and domain authority are still important

Again and again, it is said that backlinks are no longer important and that content is sufficient for rankings on Google alone.

This may be correct in certain niches and for certain keywords and I believe that first-class content is the basic requirement for good positioning in the SERPs. Nevertheless, many webmasters and bloggers neglect the structure of backlinks.

You should imagine backlinks as a kind of recommendation. The more recommendations your site has, the better it is perceived by the Google Algorithm. However, today it plays a very big role, from whom these recommendations come, i.e. the backlinks. Backlinks from spam pages can even be punished.

There are some exceptional cases in which backlinks are no longer the decisive ranking factor. The better your website cuts into other points (content design, user signals, etc.), the less strong your domain authority has to be to tend to some contested although this can be different for every industry or every niche.

Even today, it is not enough to create “only” good content. You also have to market them, e.g. through guest articles on other blogs and in other magazines of your niche. However, we will go into that again later.

Read Also: THE 7 BEST BACKLINK CHECKER TOOLS & SOFTWARE 2023

High-performance content

The competition for many search terms has increased in recent years. Nevertheless, it is of course still absolutely possible to rank for almost every keyword in a certain period.

You must put an enormous amount of time and effort into creating the content. Today it is no longer just the content itself, but also its preparation and presentation – above all, of course, readability.

That’s why I advise you to buy cheap SEO texts if you don’t know exactly what you do. If you save on the texts, you don’t like a favor in the long term, because you spend money out, but you will very probably never get it back because your content will not rank well.

So that such a mistake does not happen to you, I wrote a very detailed guide on the subject of SEO texts.

Excursus: the E-A-T model

E-A-T-These 3 letters stand for:

• Expertise
• Authority
• Trustworthiness

The concept has been around for a long time but was relevant again in 2018 as part of the so-called medical update. Google describes very well in the Quality Rater Guidelines what is meant by this.

In principle, Google uses Google websites for existing expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. To describe the whole, I would like to give a few sample questions that Google could also face when crawling a website:

• Who wrote the text? Is he an expert in his field?
• Is the site trustworthy? Is there any evidence (seal, reviews, etc.)?
• Is the site an authority in your industry (backlinks, branding, awareness, etc.)?
• Can the content be theoretically harmful to my users (wrong medical instructions, etc.)?

In principle, Google pursues the EAT model that, especially for very sensitive topics, such as medicine, only the content that was well-founded and written.

Improve Google Ranking: Concrete Steps and Tips

After we have just devoted ourselves to the theory, the practical part follows. I give you a few simple steps on the way, based on which you can optimize your site quite quickly.

Again as a reminder: it is much more important to understand the basics than to follow a process as a stupid. SEO has now become so complex that there is no longer a suitable process for every project.

The success or failure of an SEO campaign often depends on many small factors that you didn’t have on the screen at all.

Step 1: Make keyword mapping and identify the search intention

As already mentioned, you should look at each underside of your website individually. Therefore, you must ask yourself certain questions and answer them:

• What do I want to achieve with this subpage?
• For which keyword should the underside tend?
• What content does the user want to see there?

So that you do not lose track of it even later, you should make a keyword map. This contains all information about the respective sub-pages.

You can deposit any amount of information there, for example, also store a corresponding page of the competition or enter loading times and enter optimization potential.

The search intention of the respective keyword

What does a user want to see on your underside? That is the all-important question that many do wrong.

For example, if I enter a construction company in Hamburg, I would like to have a specific construction company as a top result or would I like to have an overview page on various construction companies from Hamburg?

Only if you meet the search intention can you rank at all! All other factors such as backlinks, keyword density, and content completeness do not count if you do not meet the search in the searcher.

How can you find out the search intent of a keyword?

Just have a look at the top 10 results for your selected keyword. What content appears there? Is it more of an informal result, e.g. a long guide, or do you land on one side with very short content and can you even buy products?

Google can use the user signals very precisely to see which search intention exists and therefore has not simply determined the existing search results. So you should always orient yourself on the existing formats, but at the same time try to exceed the content, design, and all other aspects.

Recognize the search intention of a keyword

If I enter the keyword: “search engine optimization” on Google, you might think that the users are of course looking for professional search engine optimization. Accordingly, one of the numerous SEO agencies would have to rank well.

However, if I look at the top 10 of the results, I am surprised that (except for the Google AdWords ads, of course) only articles like

“10 golden rules of search engine optimization”

Or even rank Wikipedia there. So it seems that the users don’t want to buy search engine optimization at all, but first find out about this topic.

So if I want to rank with my website for the keyword “search engine optimization”, I can’t just build and write a service page: “Make SEO with us! We are the best!”.

That won’t work because I don’t hit the search intention. The only way for this keyword is to write the best guide on the topic of “What is SEO”.

From my own experience, I know that many companies do not understand this approach at all. Why should I invest money in a general article that looks at my topic holistically?

Unfortunately, companies still want to write articles according to the motto: “We do the best SEO – buy from us!”

Content marketing and SEO are firmly overgrown. Proper customer acquisition via the Internet only works if the content convinces.

Step 2: Adjust the meta titles and meta descriptions

What are a meta title and a meta description? It is information for the search engine that is stored as meta information in the HTML source code. The search engines can (do not have to) read it and use the information to determine the texts for the Search Engine Result Page.

The meta-information is extremely important because Google sees it as an orientation for your content. If you write the keyword “Learn to cycle” in the title, the search engine already knows: “Aha, this is about cycling”.

The meta-titles and meta descriptions have certain requirements, especially regarding the character length. These requirements are adapted from time to time, which is why I don’t give any specific numbers here. Everything can be found with a little googling.

It is important that the title and the description for each underside contain the focus keywords individually and at the same time appealing

Snippet optimization

Be sure to take a closer look at the Google Ads at the top of the first page for the keyword. The Google Ads professionals put a lot of work and time into the best possible optimization of the meta-information! The better the meta description is tailored to the target group, the higher the likelihood that it will be clicked.

If your titles and descriptions are too short, you give away potential. If you are too long, you will be cut off and look less appealing. However, Google does not necessarily have to respond to your specifications and can also put together the meta-information from the context.

You can also use some symbols in the title or in the descriptions that create attention in Google’s results.

You can use the WordPress Plugin Yoast for SEO to adapt and edit the meta information directly to the individual subpages. The Snippet Generator from Sistrix is ​​also a helpful tool.

In addition, social networks such as Facebook also read this information. With the tool just mentioned, you can also set preview images.

The meta-information should have the following properties:

• Be relevant to the search query

• Act on the visitor

• Make you want more

• Add value

Each underside needs its meta description and its meta title adapted to its respective intention. Use Google AdWords to be oriented and build your perfect meta display.

Read Also: Beginner’s Guide: 20 Most Common WordPress Mistakes to Avoid

Step 3: Optimize your site structure or the URL structure

This step is particularly important from a search engine perspective, but also from a user view. We have already dealt with the term “relevance” again and again. Relevance is mostly made by certain keywords.

If my bottom goes through men’s jeans, ideally the word “men” and the word “jeans” should occur there.

At this point, I would like to bring you closer to the term “silo”. Siloing is extremely important, especially with larger websites. Navigate from the homepage www.domain.com into the sub-category sandals for men.

Do you notice that the two keywords appear in the URL? Right, because the URL is:

www.domain.com/menshoes-sandals/

This immediately shows what about the page. Therefore, it is so important that you consider the structure of the website very precisely and, beforehand, be sure to use a mind map or in a different way.

If your website ranks well with a URL that contains wild letters, for example, it is simply suboptimal. Neither the visitor nor the search engine can correctly classify the URL.

Before you just change all of your Pergalinks, a small warning: This creates dead pages that cause a 404 status code. This is a very bad sign for the search engine. To forward existing sub-pages to another point, you should work with 301 redirects.

This is an advanced topic in which you should get support from an expert with experience. Ideally, I show the customer in a small SEO coaching so that you can easily implement it myself afterward.

If you want to do it yourself, read it very well beforehand and make a backup of your site.

In general, the URL structure should have the following properties:

• Important and relevant keywords contain
• Bind screed instead of underlined
• No capital letters
• Avoid filling words
• Take as little space as possible
• Be as flat as possible
• Be geared toward the user’s search phrase

Step 4: Optimize the content

Since we have already talked intensively about the search intention, this should be clear. Make it as easy as possible for the visitor to consume your content. Use the search intention and put yourself in your target group.

At the same time, you should also try to align your content with certain keywords. We had already addressed the topic of longtail keywords.

A longtail keyword is a keyword, which consists of several words and usually has a small search volume.

With so-called keyword tools, you can find out which content is searched for by users on Google. There are keyword tools like the sand by the sea, but they differ greatly in quality.

If you are a beginner or only have a few projects on the Internet, you can also work with the free variants. The Google Keyword Planner is ideal.

Find search phrases that fit your selected main keyword and create a list with these keywords. Then you can create your content based on the researched keywords and also adapt your structure to it.

Google prefers it if you answer questions in your articles. With the help of W questions Tools such as Answerthublic.com, you can find out which questions about your topic are often asked and can answer them in your texts. It is advisable to use the questions as sub-headings. You can find such a sample contribution here, for example.

Do not reinvent the wheel in your content creation, but always orient yourself to your competition. What works well? What doesn’t work? But always try to do everything even better.

The more related keywords and synonyms you use in your texts, the higher the likelihood that you can rank for many at the same time. For example, I rank with some sub-pages for up to 40-50 keywords in the TOP 100 on Google.

Incidentally, you can also use the Google Suggest function to get further keyword ideas. The Tool Keywordtool.io even shows this in the free variant – but without search volume.

Step 5: Loosen up and optimize the content with pictures and videos

Especially with longer texts, you must be easy to read. On the one hand, we have the technical aspects, and on the other hand, the content and its presentation itself.

So that your texts can be easily consumable, you should write a maximum of 5-6 lines per paragraph. Longer paragraphs are difficult to read and indirectly also hurt your Google ranking.

Excursus: content design

In times of mobile-first, it is no longer just important to find what content can be found on a website, but also how these are structured and structured. The keywords are readability or difficulty of absorbing the content.

Therefore, always make sure that your content is easy to read. In the following I would like to give you a few basics:

• Font size at least 16 px
• 3-5 lines per paragraph
• Many sub-headings
• Fat marking of important sections
• Install pictures and videos
• Pictures get a caption
• Install interactive elements such as gypsy

Ultimately, the content design can be very crucial for your SEO success or the Google ranking.

After 3-5 paragraphs, it is best to get an overhead heading, which briefly describes the next paragraphs and ideally contains one or more relevant keywords.

To make texts even better readable, you should insert exciting pictures. Content creation has something to do with love. The more time and sensitivity you put into your content, the better you will record the readers.

The Technical SEO Aspects

Also, make sure that you give your pictures so-called “alternative texts”. In technical terms, these are also referred to as old attributes. These attributes were originally intended for people with visual impairment. So don’t try to put an infinite number of keywords in your old texts, but describe what is shown in the picture in a few words.

This increases the relevance and the chance that visitors will get to you via the Google picture search. Incidentally, the old attributes are also displayed if the image cannot be loaded for technical reasons.

Note the loading time of your underside. Too many pictures on one side ensure that the page loads more slowly. Speed ​​is very important to both the user and Google. A loading time value of 1-3 seconds is considered especially with WordPress pages that work with a very complex theme, this is not always easy to achieve.

Speed ​​optimization is a chapter in itself and goes beyond the framework of this article. In my article about Page Speed, I go into it again in more detail.

Be sure to compress your pictures with a good photo editing program to a minimum size so as not to give away valuable potential. I always see websites with 2MB pictures, which is fatal. You should also consider installing an image compressor, such as short pixels.

Step 6: Internal links

Yes, Google looks at every single underside individually, but your website is considered a whole, complex system. Therefore, you must link your subpages to each other.

These not only help the visitor to orientate themselves but also forward the so-called “Linkjuice” internally. For example, if a strong backlink from BILD.de points to your homepage, internal links ensure that the trust from the domain bild.de also affects the other subpages and not just on the homepage.

By targeting internal links, you can forward visitors to the places you want, but also specifically distribute the Linkjuice accordingly. Important pages on your website should also be linked most overall.

The best thing to do is link the keyword as an anchor text. The word “learning cycling” should therefore link directly to the blog article on the topic of “learning cycling”, so the anchor text is: “Learn cycling”.

Excursus: the optimal starting pages link

Web designers or agencies in particular, which do not focus on SEO, often arbitrarily build a navigation menu. User experience is usually the decisive factor.

From an SEO perspective, however, the menu must be linked to those pages that have a special meaning on the entire website.

External Linkjuice, in the form of backlinks, usually comes to the homepage of websites. From there, this Linkjuice must be specifically distributed internally so that important pages get more link juice and less important pages less link juice. So the more underside I link to my menu, the less Linkjuice each receives every single page as a whole.

By the way: Never link internally with the attribute “Nofollow”! This nevertheless passes on Linkjuice, but the linked page does not benefit. The Linkjuice ends up at a dead end.

If it makes sense, you can also link to suitable link goals outside of your article. Turn up quite economically, because in real life you do not simply recommend something “blind”. Your primary goal should always be to keep the user on your side.

Improve Google Ranking: 6 errors that you should avoid

In the following, I would like to show you a few typical mistakes that are happy to be made and hurt your ranking on Google.

Error number 1: No or poor content available

In 90 % of all cases, my customers do not rank because they simply have no or only very valuable content. Why should Google rank your site if it simply does not offer added value?

Unfortunately, there are far too many pages that have perhaps 100-300 words on many sub-pages, which are not written user-oriented.

As I have already written, good content is the absolute basic requirement for a good ranking on Google. So if you want to improve this ranking, then build content based on data (keyword research) that offers a benefit. Only then can we talk about the remaining points.

Note for companies on the subject of content

When companies come to me or my agency, the lack of Google ranking is not mainly because they have no content on their side, but because they have the wrong content on their website.

We live in the time of so-called inbound marketing. Customers can choose which company they buy a certain service or a product. Therefore, you have to earn your expert status as a company and offer potential customers added value in the form of content.

Nobody is interested in a report about the last summer barbecue or the hiring of new employees. Visitors want to know much more about whether the company offers a solution to their problems and whether it has the necessary qualification at all.

Error number 2: A technically outdated website

Most pages with little good content also have a technical framework that feels like it comes from the Stone Age. I am a clear fan of WordPress, a modern content management system, which is always mentioned positively in the eyes of Google and offers almost infinite expansion options.

If you use a system from 2005 or 2010, we don’t have to talk about SEO or Google Ranking. Every X-like competitor could beat you quickly with a modern system and good content.

Error number 3: The search intention is not hit

The search intention is one, if not the most important ranking factor, which is why I have described it in detail in this article. If someone is looking for Red Bull, then he is looking for Red Bull and not for another energy drink.

If you write 5000 words on the subject of “buying shoes”, you will not rank with it, as the users look for a shoe shop where they can buy shoes.

Error number 4: not optimized on mobile devices

A website that is not responsive is just as bad as an outdated standard, i.e. cannot be displayed and adapted to the mobile device. Anyone who has not yet optimized their website on a smartphone is still alive in the Middle Ages and has overslept for the past 10 years.

Have you ever observed how many people look at your smartphone on the subway?

Error number 5: No strong and aged domain

SEO is not a sprint, but a marathon. If you have a new website and complain about missing Google rankings after 2 months, then nobody can take you seriously. Google prefers brands and ranks pages with a trust advance much better than new pages or pages with a few good backlinks (think of the recommendations!).

On average, it takes 6, usually even 12 months before you can notice dramatic changes in the Google Ranking. Search engine optimization is not for impatient people.

You have to develop Google’s trust by always working on your quality and actively advertising your content, e.g. through guest articles.

Error number 6: No tracking and no targeted procedure

Search engine optimization is not always an advice game. You must be very analytical and structured. In many cases, unfortunately, no tracking measures such as Google Analytics or the Search Console are implemented and there is no keyword mapping. This makes it extremely difficult for you to measure successes and failures and assess them correctly.

The rankings on Google can only be improved in the long term through a systematic procedure.

Conclusion

In this comprehensive guide, you’ve discovered essential steps to enhance your Google ranking in 2023. By following this SEO checklist, you’re well-equipped to boost your website’s visibility and attract more visitors. Remember, consistent effort and optimization will lead to better results.

Improving an existing Google ranking is not always easy. Google’s algorithm is too complex for that. However, certain tactics can mostly be used. The more experience you gain in optimization, the easier it will be over time. If you have unexplained questions, just get in touch with me via Facebook any time, where I will show you all these tips using specific examples.

Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts in the comments, and make sure to pass along this valuable information to your friends who are also looking to improve their online presence. Together, we can achieve better search engine rankings and online success!