What is an SEO audit?

How to Improve Your Google Search Ranking

Improving your Google search ranking begins with making small, intentional changes.— 

Your Google search ranking impacts your visibility to your audience and how much engagement you receive. The higher you rank, the higher your chances are of being seen by consumers.

In the modern world of online advertising, however, many brands forgo an organic search strategy in favor of paid ads. But money alone can't improve your website's search rank.

Source: uschamber.com

How Long Does It Take To Improve Google Rankings?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and give you the definitive answer, “It depends.”

While I recognize this is frustrating and seems like a copout, it's the truth. SEO doesn't happen in a vacuum and every situation offers a unique set of variables.

Skill, budget, the level of competition, and how your website stacks up can all play a role in how quickly one can move the dial.

So, bearing that in mind, let's break it down in a more quantifiable sense and review what you can do to make things happen sooner, rather than later.

During an episode of AskGooglebot in June of 2021, John Mueller, a Google search rep, said it can take “several hours to several weeks” for Google to index new or updated content. He also warned that just because a page gets indexed, doesn't mean that it will rank for anything right away, if ever.

Due to the number of factors in play, rapid changes in SERPs should not be expected.

Mueller has said in the past that even if you make drastic changes to your website's design and functionality, it could still take a couple of months or even a year to have an impact.

This, however, doesn't mean that you should just sit and wait after you upgrade your site. He mentioned some specific ideas for speeding up indexing, which included:



Preventing server overload by making your server and website faster.

Prominently linking to new pages.

Avoiding the use of unnecessary URLs, like category page filters.

Taking advantage of user submission methods like uploading sitemap files, and utilizing the URL inspection tool.

Finally, Mueller reiterated the best way to get ranked is to create high-quality content that searchers will find useful. In his words, make your site “fantastic.”

The tips below — along with time, planning, and dedication — can help you improve your Google search ranking:

Source: searchenginejournal.com

Start a website crawl

In a moment, we'll run through a few more manual checks on the website.

But first, we need to start a website crawl running in the background.

An SEO crawler will spider the site in the same way as Google and give us some useful information on the structure and current SEO setup.

Source: ahrefs.com

Keyword optimizations

Both the home page and internal landing pages (content-rich pages) must include keywords that are specifically targeted to capture our ideal audience. Include 3-6 mentions (in an average 1,000-word content) of highly relevant keywords with decent search volume.

On the other hand, a landing page and/or product-service description page might be optimized for more than one keywords. For example, a single page might be optimized for “data extraction software”, “data migration tools”, and “data analytics solutions” almost equally between each other. This practice will prevent the page from ranking optimally (on the first page of the SERP) for any of these keywords.

Ideally, a separate page must be created and optimized for each keyword (or each set of keywords for one topic) with at least 800 words of content.

Source: mikekhorev.com

Optimize for speed

One of the factors that Google uses to rank your website is site speed. Having a slow site speed can affect your Google ranking and drive customers away, affecting your bottom line. You can check the speed of your website through various free online tools. If your site is lagging, you can improve its performance by compressing image files, streamlining page content and evaluating the website's host.

Source: uschamber.com

Optimize For Search Intent

The evolution of modern search has its roots in Hummingbird, later supplemented by Rankbrain and then BERT.

The end game for Google is to better understand the context of a search to serve up results that match the intent of a given query. In fact, Google's continued success depends on it.

Four common types of search (a.k.a. user) intent are:

Navigational– a search for a particular website.

Informational– a search for knowledge.

Commercial– a search for data (like reviews) to make an informed purchase decision.

Transactional– a search to make a purchase (where to buy).

How To Optimize For Search Intent

Check the SERPs for the keyword phrase that you are interested in ranking for. If the top results don't align with your page, you aren't going to rank. In other words, if Google has decided the intent of a search is informational and your page is transactional, that page will not rank well.

In cases where a page does not match the top results/search intent, you have two choices: Edit your page to match the intent. Create a new page to match the intent.

Source: searchenginejournal.com

Ensure That Your Site is Using HTTPS

The next SEO audit checklist item is to find out if your website has an SSL certificate. An SSL certificate encrypts the connection between your user's browser and your website server.

Google and other search engines will give priority to secure websites that use HTTPS over those that are still using HTTP.

You can check if your site is secure by looking for a padlock sign in your browser's search bar.

If you don't have an SSL certificate, then see our guide on how to get a free SSL certificate for your WordPress site and how to move your site from HTTP to HTTPS.

Source: wpbeginner.com

Check for Content-Related Issues

It's fairly obvious that we should avoid duplicate content in most cases. Ever since Google implemented the Panda algorithm update, you can get penalized when you use duplicate content, especially in fraudulent ways (i.e., when you steal other people's content and use it on your site).

However, there can be cases where it's your content that gets stolen. In most cases, it shouldn't bring any problem to your site, but you can always report the site to be safe (and so this thief won't steal your traffic).

You can use tools like Copyscape to help find this duplicate content.

Important: even if you are 100% sure you always use original content, there's always the possibility of duplicate content like—as mentioned— when your content is stolen by others, or when you are using a stock/template-based section in your content (i.e. when you use a stock disclaimer for your contact us).

Make sure to use rel=”canonical” in your original content, and always make sure duplicate or syndicated content links back to this canonical content.

Also, check for pages with thin content. While thin content typically won't cause a Google penalty, it's still a waste of resources (and site space). In general, consider updating or deleting pages with fewer than 200 words of content.

Source: mikekhorev.com

Stick to the Basics and Run SEO Audits Regularly

Great SEO is all about consistency and nailing the basics. If you can run an SEO audit regularly, put in place good practices, track the results, learn from them, and improve gradually, you'll be in a really good place to get organic traffic and be light-years ahead of someone who is stuck worrying about every “new” ranking factor.

Source: spyfu.com