What are the best ways to improve a site's position in Google?

Question

What are the best ways to improve a site's position in the Google search results?

Solution 1

Here are some rules I follow:

• Try not to repeat content.
• Try to get linked from other, relevant and high quality websites.
• Try to make sure your outgoing links are relevant to the content of your site (rel="nofollow" for ones that aren't, such as ads).
• Give each page a relevant (and unique) title.
• Add in a meta description to each page describing the contents or purpose. Keep in mind that meta descriptions are not used as much today.
• Mark up your site using schema.org, if applicable, to display rich snippets.
• Build a sitemap for your website and submit it using Google Search Console (but be aware of their limits).
• Keep content unique and relevant to your website.
• Use HTML correctly (<hn> tags, titles and alt attributes on images).
• Try to use relevant keywords in the URL.
• Ensure a fast load time.
• Use HTTPS for everything.
• Make sure that your site is mobile friendly and use the mobile friendly test.

Generally, if you follow these rules, your domain will naturally rank better with Google over time. If you try to speed this process up, using things like keyword spamming on your website, this is likely to be picked up and blacklisted by Google so avoid this wherever possible.

Solution 2

A lot of people look for technical tricks for SEO and ignore the big picture. You need both. Your SEO (and business) strategy is every bit as important as SEO tactics. There are more than 200 SEO factors that go into rankings, but here are a few of the more important SEO factors that I've experienced, both tactical and strategic:

• Have a website worth visiting. If your website isn't designed for users first, most of the time it won't do well in the search engines.
• Make your site crawlable. Don't rely on Flash or JavaScript navigation. If you need to use JavaScript, use it to enhance an existing (X)HTML menu, not create it. You won't even need a sitemap if your site is crawlable in the first place (but it doesn't hurt). RSS feeds also help you get crawled.
• Make a bigger website. Backlinks matter and internal links from your own pages count. The easiest, surest, and most efficient way to get backlinks is to increase the number of pages on your site. The bigger your search engine footprint, the more weight you have to throw around. This is one of the reasons blogs are recommended for SEO.
• Get your title right. You get 65 characters to create an on-topic incentive for the user to click on your search engine listing. Use the opportunity wisely. Your best keywords should be in the title. However, it's not just about using the right keywords; it's also about catching the user's attention while still signalling that your page is going to be relevant and helpful to them. Use Michael Masterson's Four U's Method: Be Unique. Be Useful. Be Urgent. Be Ultra-Specific. Stronger titles use more U's. Remember that your title is often used by social media sites to link to your page as well.
• Get your anchor text right. Use keywords that are also helpful to your users. Never use the infamous 'Click Here' or 'More...' text as a link.
• Get a handle on duplicate content. It's far too easy to create duplicate content. http://example.com, http://example.com/, http://www.example.com, and http://www.example.com/ are all considered different URLS. URL parameters also create duplicates: http://example.com?a=1&b=2 and http://example.com?b=2&a=1 are both different URLs. Use Apache or whatever server you're using to manage your redirect rules so this doesn't happen. This needs to be a consideration from the beginning and should be solved both programmatically and with server redirects.
• Don't waste time asking for links. There is no bigger waste of time and money, IMO, than emailing other websites offering to do link exchanges. Think about the time spent searching for relevant websites, emailing, responding, and implementing a link exchange. What's your hourly wage? Now think about economies of scale and how many times you have to do that to make a discernible difference for every page of your website. There is no way that you can possibly come out on top. There are easier ways to get links.
• Make your site sharable. All those little social media widgets? They might be annoying, but when used properly, they make it easier for your users to share your content. The caveat here is proper context. Privacy policies, terms of use, registration, and other pages of that ilk are probably not good candidates for a widget.
• Viral content works. But you need to use it wisely. Not every announcement on your site is going to be or should be viral. It has to make sense and it needs to be well-thought-out. Ask yourself objectively, why would someone link to this? If you can't think of a good answer, you should go back to the drawing board. Again, the 4 U's help here.
• Incentivize linking. A great way to kickstart a viral campaign or even a more moderate but steadily growing external link profile. Think contests and giveaways, but also think Stack Overflow's badge widgets.
• Build a community An audience of loyal readers will link to and share your content naturally. User-generated content increases your website's footprint and also incentivizes linking.
• Remember the big picture. Why are you doing SEO in the first place? What is the purpose of your website? It's easy to focus so much SEO that you lose sight of what you're trying to do. If you're trying to make money with your site, don't forget that you also need to focus on the usability, the design, the copy, the offer, the product, the checkout process, etc. SEO is only a small part of that.

Edit: Incidentally, one of the reasons Stack Overflow does so well in the search engines is because it has an enormous community that continually produces keyword-laden pages. It gets a lot of the basic tactical SEO right too, but this is an excellent example of big-picture thinking that most people ignore. SEO is built into the design of the community as an extension of the way the community functions. That wasn't an accident.

Solution 3

The absolute best long term strategy is to have lots of relevant content that is updated frequently and is easily accessible to your site's visitors.

Solution 4

To boost your rank:

• update site regularly
• get good back links over time
• use Google Keyword tool and Google trends to see what content is most relevant
• make your site accessible
• make your site light weight and use less http requests
• link to great websites
• use more content then HTML
• use friendly URLs
• use a domain that is up in years
• link to page within your own site
• provide a robots.txt and sitemap to Google Web Master tools
• post quality over quantity
• optimize your website for users not just search (kinda odd but true)
• use web standards
• use microformats, RDFa, ARIA and schema.org.

Solution 5

Search engine strategies are designed to find the best or most relevant content, not just the loudest. If someone finds a way to trick the search engine and get high rankings today, it will likely not work tomorrow. Don't make the mistake of trying to outsmart the search engines — good pages with good content, structure, and standards support will always win.

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Comments

[Admin]

In addition, how is StackOverflow always so high?

[Admin]

Create interesting content to the consumers of your website.

[Admin]

SEO: Where do I start?

[freddoo]

From my experience, Google rankings are about 80% links from external sites.

[bbutle01]

Is keeping outgoing links low really a good idea?

[John Mueller]

@Casebash: Don't worry about outbound links if the links are valuable to your content & to your users (but add a rel=nofollow if the links are ads).

[Virtuosi Media]

Quantity does not always exceed quality.

[Gordon Gustafson]

do frequent updates improve your standing?

[zdan]

Yes, frequent updates to your content will help you rank higher.

[Darryl Hein]

Google doesn't think this is really important: youtube.com/watch?v=-pnpg00FWJY Yes, it's a factor, but it's definitely not something people should be concerned about.

[Lotus Notes]

If you're giving a lot of referrals to another site, they just may help you in return. I don't see any reason to purposely avoid linking to other relevant sites.

[Nat Ryall]

@Lotus: Because it's about quality more than quantity. Google "knows" when you're building links through affiliate networks generally, and they count for nothing (or sometimes against you).

[Lotus Notes]

@Nat Ryall: Would you go so far as to prevent users from posting external links in comments?

[Nat Ryall]

@Lotus: No but I would put any user generated content, where I suspected excessive links to be, on a subdomain (which is a separate entity to the root domain to Google). In cases where you have a good userbase the content should far outweigh the potentially negative aspects of external links anyway.

[Jason]

With regards to "Use a domain that is up in years"; ONLY do this if that domain has good rep! Otherwise you will be doomed for a very long time

[Petrus Theron]

@John: Aren't rel=nofollow attributes ignored by Google now?

[instanceofTom]

Oh, you mean... be a relevant and useful resource... that deserves its rank?

[UpTheCreek]

Is this really relevant now? Before, nofollow would stop pagerank leakage, but not the pagerank 'share' leaves your site, but is simply discarded.

[UpTheCreek]

Stackoverflow links are all 'nofollow' so I doubt that is helping you.

[jean]

@UpTheCreek good point, I've updated

[Virtuosi Media]

@UpTheCreek - Any difference in characters, even capitalization, is a different URL: mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization

[UpTheCreek]

in most cases, yes, but in my experience the root domain with or without a slash is treated as the same url.

[UpTheCreek]

Can you provide any reference regarding how microformats help seo? Not disagreeing - just interested :)

[Kzqai]

The way to handle user-written links is via <a rel='nofollow' these days.

[DisgruntledGoat]

@Tchalvak: Actually, nofollow is the way to handle untrusted links. That would almost certainly be from users, but not all users are necessarily untrusted.

[Kzqai]

Uh, but stackoverflow itself rather flies in the face of that rule.

[Kzqai]

Err, the second one, that is, not the first.

[John Conde]

Meta tags do not affect your rankings

[Fiasco Labs]

Keep content unique and relevant to your website. Where most SEO inquirers fall down on the job. Looking for magic and keywords, they overlook the reality that good copywriting, editorial skills and content are needed. Write for your audience and Google will follow.

[UpTheCreek]

@NatRyall - can you provide more info (any maybe supporting links) regarding the 'Over time your domain will gain "trust"' statement. Do you just mean that over time you will acquire more incoming links? Or some other type of 'trust' mechanism?

[sergzach]

Are you sure that submitting sitemap does increase a position of a site? Or this is for the case when Google can't crawl all pages of your site?

[Nat Ryall]

@sergzach: A sitemap allows Google to crawl all of your content (even if it's poorly linked) and you can hint to Google about how important pages are and how often they should be updated. This helps ensure that all your content is evaluated for rankings, that you have maximum content coverage in results, and that your most important content is marked as such.

[Daniel Jones]

These rules can be classified into 3 groups: on-site optimization (<h1>, unique content, rel=nofollow, etc.), off-site optimization (netlinking with other sites), SERP optimization (meta desc, rich snippets, etc. mainly for users rather than for google).

[tim.baker]

+1 for "optimize your website for users not just search (kinda odd but true)" this is incredibly important now

[Jérôme Verstrynge]

Setting NOFOLLOW on off-topic outbound links does not help at all for ranking, even remotely. It is a myth.

[Jérôme Verstrynge]

Making a website bigger in itself is not enough to increase ranking. The content has to be relevant to user queries.

[Jérôme Verstrynge]

Update frequency is not correlated with ranking. Only relevancy is. Updating content frequently may have crawlers visit your site more often, but not necessarily rank better. It is a bloody myth that needs to die.

[Jérôme Verstrynge]

'link to great websites' -> It does not give a ranking boost, dixit John Mueller. Another myth that needs to die. 'use a domain that is up in years' -> It is not a predictor of quality. Old domain do not automatically give a ranking boost. 'use microformats, RDFa, ARIA and schema.org.' -> It does not help with ranking, only with relevancy.

[Jérôme Verstrynge]

The quality of links matters too. If Google does not trust a link, it neutralises it. That link won't pass juice.

[Derecho]

@JVerstry Oh yes it does. If you don't do it, you may get a Google smackdown for unnatural links from your site. Which will effectively bury your site in the SERPs.

[Derecho]

@UpTheCreek It's still relevant.

[Oskar Skog]

http:// example.com and https:// example.com/ is the exact same URL due to how HTTP works. Differing between slash and no slash on the root page is pointless and unfair. (There's not supposed to be a space in those URLs, but there's some annoying bug in the comments that mangles URLs.)

[aabujamra]

Do you know this "The Linkbuilding Network"? It seems that they analyze your profile and connect you by email with websites of similar profile that are also looking for linkbuilding. It looks very simple, is just a short form, I think it's worth the shot: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/…

[Brian]

Warning: Incentivized links may harm your site's positioning. Over the last few years, Google has tweaked their algorithm to penalize sites which have too many low quality incoming links. Also note that incentivized linking may be treated as a Link Scheme by Google.