Today, we are going to tell you exactly how to rank the first page of Google step by step. In fact, we use this exact formula to rank on the first page of Google for thousands of keywords like backlinks, SEO best practices, and thousands of others.

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be the same generic SEO advice you’ve probably seen a thousand times before, like create great content, use keywords on your page, make sure your site loads quickly, and all that stuff that you’ve probably seen a million times before.

That stuff can help a little bit, it is important to get the basics, right? But if you want to rank for competitive keywords, that stuff might help a little bit, but it’s not really going to take your site to the first page of Google for really competitive keywords.

What will? The steps that I’m about to lay out for you right now, starting with step number one, which is to find five keywords.

Step 1: Find Five Keywords

So you probably already know that SEO is really all about keywords. It’s all about ranking for keywords that your customers search for. And there are a bunch of different strategies, tools, and tactics for finding them, but one of the easiest and most effective is to use Google autocomplete.

All you need to do for this to work is type in a keyword that you think a customer might search for and look for the suggestions that Google gives you. These are great for two reasons. First of all, these keywords are usually keywords people are searching for now, so they tend to be trending a little bit.

That way, you can get in early and sort of ride the wave as more people search for that term. But more importantly, they’re usually long-tail keywords, which are much less competitive than most keywords that people go after.

One of the biggest mistakes people make that are new to SEO is that they go after really, really competitive keywords, and they’re usually keywords that people first think of when they think of their business.

Example

So for example, let’s say you run a skincare brand and you want to create a blog post around the keyword skincare routine. Now on the surface, this is a good keyword because it’s something that your customers probably search for. The problem is it’s just way too competitive for most new sites to rank for.

You have huge brands trying to rank for this skincare routine keyword. A long-tail version of this keyword would be something like skincare routine for men or skincare routine for dry skin. These two keywords are much less competitive than skincare routine, so even if your site is new, you still have a chance to rank for it.

Use Related Searches

Once you’re done with Google autocomplete, scroll down to the bottom of Google to the related searches section. Here’s where Google will show you keywords that are directly related to your keyword and sometimes more tangentially related. So it’s almost like brainstorming within Google.

Use Exploding Topics

Speaking of keywords that are low competition, a great way to find them is a tool called Exploding Topics. It really is a great way to find keywords that aren’t competitive yet.

Step 2: Create Amazing Content Around the Keywords

Which leads us to our second step, which is to create amazing content out of each of the five keywords that you found. So at this point, you should have found at least five keywords that are a good fit for your business and also a relatively low competition. And now it’s time to create amazing content around those keywords.

Understand Search Intent

Now back in the day, amazing content meant just these like huge guides, 10,000 words, covered everything. And in some cases that does make sense. But in SEO today, the big thing is search intent.

And what that basically means is when someone searches for something, there’s a search intent behind it. Sometimes a search intent is looking for information, looking to buy something, looking to browse and compare different products. And each keyword basically has a unique search intent.

And the better that your content can satisfy search intent, the higher you’ll rank in Google.

Example

For example, someone searching for best organic cat food is probably not credit card in hand ready to buy cat food. They’re more in browsing mode and they’re comparing different options.

So if your page does a good job of comparing the pros, cons, pricing of different cat foods, it’s likely to perform well. But if you create a page that’s like promoting one cat food over the other, and it’s really sale-sy, it’s probably not going to convert well. But if someone’s searching for something like buy cat food online, they’re much further down the funnel and they’re ready to buy.

Be Unique and Valuable

You could even rank a product or category page for a keyword like that on your e-commerce site, even though there’s no valuable content. Besides search intent, you also want to create something that’s unique, something that brings something new to the table or something better to the table. Otherwise, you’re going to have a hard time ranking because for most keywords, there are already a decent number of results.

So for you to stand out and create something that deserves to be on the first page or even number one, you need to bring something really different to the table that the results don’t already have.  

Plus, most importantly, it’s not just unique for the sake of being unique. It satisfies search intent, which Google can measure. And when they see people are generally happy with your page, it’s going to rise up the rankings.

But if they find that your page isn’t a good fit for search intent, they’re going to downrank you.

Step 3: Optimize Your Content for SEO

Once you have a piece of content ready to go, the next step is to optimize it for SEO. And this used to be somewhat complicated and involved back in the day.

You used to have to put your keyword in your content a bunch of times, put your keyword or an H2 tag. But today, that stuff doesn’t really move the needle anymore. We just focus on creating great content that satisfies search intent.

Basic On-Page SEO

The whole on-page thing is relatively simple. All you really need to do is have your keyword in your title, in the first couple hundred words of your page, and then a few other times on your page, just to let Google know that this page is about that topic.

Example

For example, this post from the Exploring Topics blog is optimized around the keyword business trends. So we include that exact keyword in the title, in the first hundred words, and a few other times on the page.

Honestly, that alone is like 90% of on-page SEO right now. And yes, that page does rank number one for our target keyword business trends, but it’s not something that ranks because of any on-page SEO magic. It ranks because it’s the best result for the keyword business trends. It has the best content, the most original content, and it satisfies search intent.

Step 4: Optimize for User Experience

So now that your content is written, optimized for on-page SEO, the next step is to optimize it for user experience. Google used to rank sites based largely on how many backlinks they had or based on how many times a keyword appeared on a page.

And it’s not really like that anymore. Backlinks are still super important. I’m going to cover that later, but Google largely ranks content based on how happy it makes a searcher, which is that search intent thing that we talked about earlier.

Improve User Engagement

But you can’t just create a piece of content that satisfies search intent and expect it to rank because you also need to make sure that the user can find their information quickly, basically user experience.

In fact, Google can carefully measure how people interact with your site and whether they bounce back to the search results. And if people bounce quickly from your site after landing on it from Google, they’ll downrank you.

But if people are generally staying on your site for long periods of time after searching for a keyword, that’s a positive sign to Google, and they’re likely to raise your rankings.

Front-Load the Value

With that, here’s exactly how to optimize your content for user experience.

The first thing is you want to front load the value as much as possible, which is basically giving people the thing they’re looking for as high on the page as you can.

Basically, you don’t want to hide insights and hide really valuable tidbits in your content. You want to make it stand out so people can skim and get what they’re looking for quickly.

That way, people can get value within seconds of landing on the page. Another thing to look at is your content layout and design.

Improve Content Layout and Design

Specifically, you want to make your content easier to read, or as we like to say, when it comes to online content, hard to read means won’t read. So if your font is small or sections are all squished together or you have long paragraphs, people are not going to read it no matter how good the content is.

Example

Now, if you want to see a great example of how this looks, go to Healthline.com. They’re probably the gold standard when it comes to content layout and design.

They have super big, easy to read font, a simple layout, and lots of subheadings that make the content easy to read and skim.

Step 5: Build Backlinks

Now it’s time for our last step, which is to build backlinks. Make no mistake, backlinks are still super important when it comes to SEO.

That’s because Google largely uses backlinks to figure out which sites are trustworthy and authoritative. In other words, the exact types of sites that they want to show at the top of the search results.

Simple Backlink Strategy: Be The Source

Now, there are a million ways to build backlinks from broken link building to guest posting.

But considering this is a video about SEO for beginners, we wanted to give you a sort of approachable strategy that anyone can use. A strategy that works especially well for new sites with zero authority. And that strategy is called Be The Source.

The first step is to find a statistic in your industry that you can write about and expand on. For example, at Exploding Topics, we realized that a lot of people are searching for how much data is generated per day. But it was lost inside these long statistics posts among a bunch of other stats about how much data is generated per day, where the data comes from.

Target Specific Stats

Now you might be wondering, if my site’s new, it doesn’t have any authority, why would Google rank that content? And why would someone link to me? It’s a good question and a legitimate concern. That’s exactly why you want to target really specific stats that people are going to have a hard time finding anywhere else.

These specific stat keywords are super low competition, so you can usually rank for them without any authority whatsoever.

Key Takeaways

So let me give you the key takeaways from this video so you can get started and actually start to rank your site in Google today.

• First, you want to target low competition, long tail keywords that are still trending and they haven’t become mainstream yet.
• Next, you want to create a piece of content that’s not just great and high quality, which is vague.
• Third, you want to optimize your content for on-page SEO, which is basically adding your keyword on your page a couple of times.
• Next, optimize your content for user experience and make sure people can get value as soon as possible after landing on your site.
• Finally, you want to build backlinks. And like we said, there are a thousand different ways to do this, but the best way to get started is to be the source for a specific.

For more such informative posts, please visit https://backlinkpolicy.com/