Hello, my friend and a very warm welcome back. Today I was checking the rankings on some of my posts and was pleasantly surprised to find some ranking in position 1 page 1.
This inspired me to share How I did this because my blog is young.
How to Rank First On Search Engines With A New Website.
- Write a longer post than your competitors.
- Read The Top 5 posts and see what has not been covered.
- Make your Page Speed as fast as possible.
- Use A Plugin for SEO.
- Learn about Search Engine Optimization.
- Answer Peoples Questions.
- Use Relevant Keywords In the Title.
- Write keywords naturally in the body of the post.
- Structure posts to be scannable
- Use internal and external links.
You would think in 2021 that it would be harder to rank on page 1 as there are so many new bloggers springing up every day. but that is not the case.
we all want the coveted number 1 spot as that is who gets the majority of the available free traffic. It also grows our email lists and improves our sales.
I know how much you want it and writing this post will explain 10 ways to get the number 1 spot you so dearly desire 🙂
In the above image, my post is position 2 page 1 of Google for Stephan James Products Review.
The post is only 4 months old so it can easily go into the number 1 spot if I update it with the tips I’m now going to share with you.
At the time of writing this post, my blog is still a baby it has not been around for years, just merely 8 months.
The reason I’m mentioning this is many people told me I would need a ton of backlinks to gain authority and get top rankings in search and I would be lucky to get anywhere until the 9-month mark!
I’m very happy to say they were wrong!
There are only a handful of backlinks pointing to this site, Yet, my biggest slice of the pie is coming directly from the search engines!
My organic results are a massive 41.6 %
A few months ago my biggest traffic source was coming from Pinterest. Now the figures have been completely reversed.
I can tell you I’m super happy all of my hard work is paying off in spades!
Let’s go ahead and dive in with the all-important tips!
This post may contain affiliate links. This means if you click a link and make a purchase I will receive a commission. The price you pay will not be affected.
1.Write A Longer Post Than Your Competitors
The search engines all have a rule that they follow and that is to put whoever answers the question in the most thorough way at the top of the search.
By looking at the word count your competitors have used you can see how much you need to write to beat that.
Note. Don’t add fluff for the sake of more words. Make sure it is all relevant! Google loves longer posts and believe it or not so do readers!
2.Read The Top Posts To See What Has Not Been Covered
Whilst looking at the word count read through the top 5-8 posts and find out information that has been missed that you can fill in the gap of.
There will be tips that have not been included.
I recommend you read between 5 and 8 posts for added ideas. Checking your competition is a great habit to get into.
Note: Don’t ever copy and paste another’s hard work. Just read it and write what you need to say in your own words.
Please Remember the search engines won’t rank content that has been duplicated!
3.Make Your Page Speed As Fast As Possible
Having a slow-loading website is a ranking killer!
No search engine will put your website on page 1 if it loads slowly.
Having covered every point in this post except for this one was the problem I had with not ranking very well.
After asking a ton of questions from the community about my poorly ranked posts we all figured out my site was loading slowly 🙁
being a part of Wealthy Affiliate I can check my site speed anytime from the platform as Google PageSpeed Insights is included.
The first change I made was to my theme now I’m using Generate Press Premium and that helped a lot to speed up my site.
Some of my figures were still in the red zone for mobiles until I got a paid plugin called WP Rocket that sorted everything out with Ease and now my pages load lightning fast!
Then my page rankings shot up Yay!
4.Use A Plugin For SEO
A huge factor about rankings is using SEO. That stands for search engine optimization and every page 1 post uses it!
I use the all-in-one SEO Plugin.
This gives me a page analysis the same as the image below:
I check this information before publishing the page and correct anything that is suggested.
The score from 100 for the above post was 98 so I just left the readability error as the post is starting to show in the search engines already.
All-in-one-SEO is a free plugin and it is very simple to set up with the wizard they provide.
Note: You don’t need to score 100/100 to rank at the top. Somewhere in the ’90s will still get you there!
5. Learn About Search Engine Optimization
There is an awful lot more to SEO that I haven’t mentioned in this post. Like on and off-page SEO.
I learned all about this topic from day 1 with my number 1 Recommendation and it has stood me in good stead with ranking and traffic from the search engines.
Some say you don’t need to learn it immediately. I happen to totally disagree with that. Doing it from the start will save you a ton of time later!
And using SEO is huge for ranking.
6. Answer People’s Questions
What is the main reason to write a post?
You know the answer it is to answer a searchers query.
User experience is everything with that said you should be writing for user experience as well as answering questions.
My main goal with posts is to solve my reader’s problems.
If you are unsure where you can get questions from here are a few suggestions:
Facebook groups.
Reddit.
And Quora.
My favourite of those is Quora.
7. Use Relevant Keywords In Your Title
Having a keyword or keyphrase in your title will show the search engine what your content is about.
This will obviously help it to rank higher.
It is much harder to rank for a single keyword than it is for a keyphrase.
Using what is called a long-tail keyword means writing a phrase that contains your keyword.
For example:
My 2 keywords were blog traffic, If I just concentrated on those my post would not be ranking in position 1 page 1 of Bing and Yahoo.
By choosing a keyphrase that makes sense and putting it as my title I achieved the number 1 spot.
8. Write Keywords Naturally In Your Post
Using keywords throughout your post will also help you to rank for more words than you thought possible.
The best place to put them is in your internal headings.
This will help the search engine bots to crawl your page easier and make the user experience better.
Note: Do Not Stuff your post with keywords as you will be penalised for it.
9. Structure Posts To Be Scannable
Trying to get your readers to stay to the end of your post can be difficult.
As I said above user experience is everything with search engines. If people click look and are gone in a few seconds that will not stand you in good stead.
A big reason many do that is they see huge blocks of text and they don’t like that.
We are not in a schoolroom we are professional bloggers so the rules are completely different.
Using lots of headings and writing in single sentences makes your post scannable and people love it and are more likely to read the whole post.
Even if the article contains 4,000 words your users will not notice and keep going
Note: You will know when you are getting it right by checking the rankings of your posts! When they are number 1 you have done a perfect job.
10. Use Internal and External Links
An internal link is where you place links to other relevant posts that you have written.
The external link will be to something you have referenced within your post. Here in this post, I have linked out to the Answer the Public Page.
My internal link example is my number 1 recommendation above.
Doing both links in each post is essential to rank on page 1 and whichever SEO tool you use will also cover this.
Adding the links will do 2 positive actions for you.
1. The search engines will understand your content better and rank it much higher.
2. And, Your content will have more value, especially if you link to older posts to keep them current.
My Final Thoughts
Many of you probably think this is a daunting prospect trying to outrank some of the big guns on page 1.
My advice is don’t think you cannot do it! but know that you can if you implement the tips in this post.
A quick bonus tip: Ensure your blog is optimized for mobiles. Most themes these days are but check to make sure as many people use their phones when surfing the net!
Thanks for supporting me to the end of this post I appreciate your time.
Have a question for me then please leave it in the comments below and I will get back to you as soon as humanly possible.
Did you get value from this post? If you did then please share it to help others to get to the top of the page by using the social media buttons provided. Thank you.
Let me know if your posts go up in the search engines after implementing the points in this post. I would seriously like to know!
Lisa. 🙂 Founder and CEO of mistakesbloggersmake.com
I would have never thought to write a post longer then my competitors. I always thought that a long post was not good. But on that note, my posts are generally longer, simply because I want to get all the information out there that my reader needs. I also always answer questions and reply to every comment. Just a habit. I started it because it gave me more comments, but just seems like a courtesy to my readers.
Your post should be as long as it takes to cover all of the information, if you are doing that then you are doing it right!
Answering questions and replying to comments is a courtesy I agree but it is also more than that in the eyes of the search engines.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
Have a great week.
Lisa.
You’re results after just four months are impressive. Thanks for putting this guide together, as I’m working on ways to improve my Search Engine results. I think making sure your posts are longer and contain valuable information that competitors haven’t covered is definitely key on getting and retaining readers. I try to make sure my posts are always over 1,000 words.
Thank you Alicia I am pleased with the results. I have experimented with long and short posts and the longer they are the more they seem to rank in the search engines.
Have a great day.
Lisa.
Really amazing and helpful article. In the first point, you explained that a long article is always the best. I completely agree with you. What you talked about happened to me. My last two articles were long and took a great and hard effort from me, and the result was amazing. The two articles in Yahoo and Bing are ranked The first for a few days, but Google is not yet, the traffic from Yahoo and Bing was good and satisfactory.
The importance of the second point is to write a strong post that covers the entire content, so the reader will find everything he is looking for within your content. But there are basic points that are common and constant in all posts that must be written in your style and personality.
Thank you for sharing your wonderful post.
You are very welcome. I’m happy to know that you found it of use and that you agree about longer-form content. It does seem to rank faster and be higher up in the SERPs results.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
Lisa.