Everyone wants to boost their search engine ranking, but no one wants to get penalized. For decades, SEOs have pushed the limits of search engine marketing trying to do just that. It has led to advances in Google algorithms which lead to higher rankings for quality sites and manual penalties for those employing black-hat SEO practices.
You can read articles all day long about SEO techniques and how to rank higher in search results. While many have opinions, there are a few commonalities they all share. I have compiled the top five ways I have found to help boost your search results while staying away from a Google penalty.
1. Make Sure Your Site is Healthy
This is the first thing you need to do before trying any type of optimization technique. If your website is not healthy, people will not come to read your content, and other sites will not link to you.
So what does it mean to be healthy?
A healthy website means that it is free of malware, Google can crawl it, and people want to visit because it is easy to find information. Here are some of the things you can do to help ensure your website is healthy:
- Check for a Google penalty. You can use tools such as Pixel Groove Penalty Checker Tool to show if your site has a Google penalty. If you have a Google penalty, your site will not show up in search results. Also note that this is not a foolproof way of determining if you have a Google penalty, only an indication. The only sure way to tell is by checking Google Webmaster Tools for a manual action notification.
Screenshot of Pixel Groove showing results for the website Amazon.com. Pixel Groove will only give you an indication (e.g., “looks OK” or “possibly sandboxed”). You will need to check for manual actions in Google Webmaster Tools to be sure.
- Site speed is an important factor for a healthy website. When visitors have to wait for pages to load, they will likely leave your site and go to a competitor. That is why Google now considers site speed as a ranking factor.
- Make sure your sitemap is up-to-date and that it is submitted to Google. Use Google Webmaster Tools to ensure that Google can crawl your site to obtain information. If not, any SEO work you do will be useless.
2. Keep Your Blog Content Fresh
There is a metric that SEOs follow called a “freshness score.” A freshness score is what is used to know if your site has new content. When you publish a new blog post, Google will note the date of the content. The longer it is posted, the older it gets and could be considered outdated.
While this is not a standard metric, it is something that many bloggers and webmasters follow. There is also plenty of data that shows fresh content can influence your Google rankings.
So what is considered fresh?
There is no real number that will make you Google-friendly. It all comes down to readership and your ultimate goals. If you have a website where you get return visitors daily, you will likely do better to post content daily. You will also need to check your site metrics to determine how many visitors you receive and when.
Play around by posting content once a day, then once a week etc., until you find a comfortable medium to satisfy your goals and obtain more traffic. The more traffic you get the higher you will rank in search results.
The chart above shows how many articles were published by top article websites in January 2015. Forbes had the most with 1,502 articles, with The Next Web last at 612 articles. Image courtesy of NeilPatel.com.
Another suggestion is to go back through all your content and ensure it is up-to-date. If there is updated information you can add to a post (especially listicles), add it to freshen things up. You would be surprised at how much you can do (adding images, videos, etc.) to help liven up old content.
3. Diversify Your Link Profile
Link diversity is one of the most important things you can do as a webmaster when obtaining backlinks to your website. A diverse link profile simply means your backlinks are not done the same way each and every time.
Here are some things you can do to ensure link diversity:
- Obtain links from sites with different domain authorities, not just high authority domains.
- Vary your anchor text. Do not link to the same page from the same anchor text.
- Link to more than your homepage. Having some homepage links are fine but you need to link to articles, how-to guides, and other information that will be useful to readers.
Why is link diversity important?
SEO experts agree that having a diverse link profile helps show Google that your link building tactics are not black-hat. Think about it. Why would only high domain authority websites link to you? Why would different websites only link to your homepage? These are the exact questions asked by Google which can lead to a manual action.
When engaging in any type of link building, make sure to diversify everything from anchor text to the page you link to. Google isn’t stupid and will recognize unnatural links and diversifying is the only way to help avoid a penalty.
4. Write Longer Articles
There used to be a debate about shorter versus longer articles and which ones were better for SEO value. Notice I said “used to.” Study after study has found that long-form content does wonders for your search ranking.
Why long-form content?
The rule of thumb used to be that people don’t have the attention span for longer content. However, this led to many shorter articles (400-600 words) that only provided readers with “some” of the answers they were looking for, not “all.”
Shorter posts led to people leaving websites trying to find the answers to all their questions. Each article they read led them to ask another question and therefore search for another article. Then, long-form content started taking hold.
Image above from Backlinko showing the Google position of articles in search results with the average number of words for those articles. You will see that long-form content ranks higher.
Longer articles can be used to write in-depth answers to people’s questions. Readers can scroll through and find the answer to a simple question. They can also be used to provide answers to questions that people may not even know they wanted answered. Here is how it benefits:
- People spend more time on the page which is a ranking factor for Google.
- Readers are more likely to share articles when they provide complete answers to questions or can be used as a reference.
- Long-form content leads to return visitors as people will bookmark content they can use as a reference.
If you don’t believe me, ask Brian Dean from Backlinko. In a recent study, Dean found that the average word count of articles on page one of Google was 1,890 words. Numbers don’t lie, long-form content works.
5. Readability is a Must
Keeping on the topic of long-form content, you must make sure people are able to read it. Simply having 2,000 words is not good enough if people can’t even read the first paragraph. Again, the goal is to have people stay on your site, read the content, bookmark for later use, and share it with everyone they know.
Now, when using long-form content, you need to do more than just type words. For readability and higher conversion rates, include images and videos within the content. You will see that I provided images throughout this article which helps break up the content and also visuals in each section. This is easier on the eyes and will help people read the content.
Proofreading is important as grammar and spelling errors will kill your content.
Finally, you should use a readability checker for your content. Let an algorithm go through your content and point out any readability issues. Use the suggestions to clean up your content before posting.
Final Word on Boosting Your Search Rankings
There are many ways to help boost your search rankings, but these are five of the most common used by SEO experts. Before trying to improve your rank, you need to make sure you have a healthy website. Ensure you have a diverse link profile and that you are using long-form content. Also post on a regular basis to keep your content fresh.
The ultimate goal is to move to the top of search results. Stay away from “quick-ranking” schemes such as paying for backlinks. Use techniques that have been tested and proven by experts and you will likely increase your ranking while avoiding a Google penalty.