Boost Rankings of Keywords Within Striking Distance
Finding keywords within striking distance is a great way to increase search traffic.
However, knowing how to boost rankings for them can be difficult. In this article, I am going to outline some of the best practices that are helpful in enterprise seo services.
When you are looking at improving your ranking of a keyword, remember one thing. You are in competition with other websites that want to rank for the same keyword that you do.
If your website is fairly new, it is possible to rank fairly well when starting out trying to improve your ranking of a specific keyword. However, as time goes on and more sites target this phrase, your site will start having trouble staying within striking distance of the top positions in search results.
What is Striking Distance?
Striking distance is when your site sits within the first page of Google’s search results for a specific keyword. So, let’s say you are trying to improve your ranking for “bears.” If you are not currently within the first 10 listings on Google for this keyword, your site is within striking distance.
This means that you could improve your seo rankings and see a big increase in search traffic if you can close the gap and get closer to the top 10 results.
What Can You Do?
The following tips are things I have found increase ranking results quite significantly:
Optimize Page Titles
Optimizing your page titles is a great way to increase your chances of ranking for a specific keyword in seo. When you are optimizing page titles, simply add the keyword that you want to rank ahead of the others in the title and make sure it is separated by a pipe character “|” and then follow with other relevant components such as:
<title>Your Keyword|Company Name</title>
Using a pipe character to separate keywords within your titles allows Google’s search spiders to understand that these words are related and should be grouped together. You can also see how many times a keyword appears in the title as this is seen as additional relevancy by search engines as well. If you have a page that is aimed at a specific keyword, it should have this as its title.
If you want to rank for many keywords, try adding them as subheadings on the page using H2 tags or similar. This lets Google know that these are relevant terms and should be grouped together into clusters of related information.
Use Keyword Density Appropriately
Keyword density refers to how often a specific keyword or phrase appears on the page. If you are looking to rank for a specific term, make sure that it appears more often on your page than the terms you are targeting but do not want to rank as highly.
This is because search engines give higher rankings to sites that are more relevant to the keyword or phrase that is being searched for. If they see that your site contains the words they are looking for, but does not contain relevant information, then you will be punished and lose ranking potential as a result.
Add Content Meaningful to Users
Finally, try to add as much content as possible that is useful and relevant to users. Search engines are always looking for information that provides a great user experience and indexing as such.
Keywords should be treated as a guide of the type of content you should include within your site, but it is not the only thing search engines look for when determining rankings. Add relevant images, video, social media integration.
And other rich media to your site and make it a point to add content that is useful, fresh, and updated regularly. Using keywords appropriately will help you rank for the right ones instead of casting too wide a net and catching many irrelevant terms in the process.
- Expand Your Content
You write some great content, and maybe you even promote it on your social channels. But then the views stop coming after time. Why does this happen? One reason could be because people run out of things to read; there’s only so much time in a day. So what can you do to make your content worth reading and stop people from deleting it before reading the end? Here are some tips:
- Take advantage of “evergreen” blogging and keep your content fresh. What this means is that you want to write about things that will still be relevant years down the road. So many companies and bloggers start with a piece of content and focus on immediate results. But if their strategies aren’t sustainable, they won’t have a long-term audience.
The best way to approach this is by writing evergreen content – but updating it periodically so that it’s current enough to earn views. For example, let’s say you’re writing about SEO strategies. You can talk about things like keyword research and backlinking. But you need to make sure the content always reflects current trends in your industry.
- Don’t pigeonhole yourself into a topic or tone. Think of something like ESPN: they write about football and baseball. But also pop culture and politics, and sometimes even food and music. While sports are their bread and butter. They can still offer a wide range of content that appeals to a larger audience. Don’t think that you can only write about one topic. Instead, branch out and try something new!
- Be human with your content. Your target audience wants to know who you are, and they want to see what you’re all about. So instead of delivering impersonal content packed with industry jargon, take the time to humanize your blog by writing in a conversational tone and adding some personality into your posts (like I’m doing right now). If your readers can connect with you on a personal level, they’ll be more likely to turn back for more. If you write in a way that feels forced or unnatural, they’ll know and stop reading your content.
By taking these three pieces of advice into consideration, you should have no problem expanding your blog’s content and ensuring its success.
- Produce Content As Much As You Can with different types
You’ve heard the saying “content is king,” right? It’s a slogan that resonates with marketers and website owners.
But why? Well, content marketing delivers targeted traffic and helps you establish yourself as an expert in your niche (and it does wonders for SEO). The more content you produce, the more likely people will find and click on your link (which will increase your relevance). And, when you’re credible and authoritative enough, there’s a chance that search engines may even place you above the fold.
That last bit is important because it confirms what we already know: Content marketing can help us rank higher in Google.
The next questions, then, are how to create this content and what types of content should we be focusing on?
As you’ll see in the following posts, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. We can increase our chances for higher rankings by using methods that have worked in the past.
And while things change quickly in SEO, we’ve seen these strategies work time and again.
Below, we’ll be covering the three most important types of content to create (and why they’re important).
As you read on, consider how you can use this information to your advantage. Then, share what you learn with others in your industry who could benefit from it.
Content is king… and we’ll show you how to make it work for you.
The Three Most Important Types of Web Page Content:
- Textual content (blogs, articles):
This is the type of content that marketers usually think of first. And, it’s the most important of the three content types to have on your website. Textual answers are typically long-form answers that include information about a problem or question someone may have related to your industry or niche.
For example, if you’re in the fitness industry and want to rank for “weight loss,” you could write an article that discusses the various ways someone can go about losing weight. This includes healthy foods (like acai berries), exercises, and supplements (like green tea extract).
The importance of textual content: Because it’s directly related to a specific topic, this type of content is highly targeted and relevant to search engine queries. It also has the most potential of the three content types to rank well.
Creating textual content can be time-consuming, which is why many opt for articles or blog posts. It’s also why SEO agencies are willing to charge more money for their services – it takes a significant investment of both time and resources to see results with this type of content.
- Videos
Videos can be a great way to answer questions or give advice about certain topics. And, the more videos you have on your site, the more opportunities you’ll have to show up in search results for different queries. Plus, videos are an effective way to increase conversion rates. Because they make people feel involved and give them the impression that you care about what they have to say.
It’s important to mention, however, that videos are more time-consuming than textual content. If video production is not within your budget or expertise, you can always outsource this type of work and use it as a marketing tool. We’ll talk more about how to find and hire a reliable video production company in an upcoming post.
The importance of video content
Video content is highly targeted, relevant to search queries, and has the most potential for higher rankings. It’s also great at increasing conversion rates because it makes people feel more involved with you and your business.
- Interactive Content –
This type of content is important because it directly relates to the user experience. And, more and more users are turning to their mobile devices to access the Internet, which means they want a fast and smooth experience every time.
Interactive content can include a number of different things depending on your business. But, examples would be calculators (to help people figure out their tax return), quizzes (to learn more about your customer’s interests), and even something as simple as a game (like the types of games you see on Facebook).
The importance of interactive content: Because this type of content directly relates to user experience, it can improve your site conversion rates. Another benefit is that it’s a way to target different keywords. For example, if you’re in the finance industry and use a quiz on your site, you can easily link each question to a specific term or phrase related to “personal finance.”
It’s also important to remember that interactive content is not as time-consuming as video production. So, it’s a great way to increase the amount of content you have on your site without taking away from other projects and initiatives.
- Featured Snippet SEO Optimization
Google has been showing featured snippets within its SERPs for a few years now. SEO’s have always wanted to appear in these snippets, but only recently has it become more of a priority. The reason is simple: traffic.
Google shows over 1 billion search queries per day. For reference, the 2nd most popular website in the world (Facebook) has 1/10th the amount of daily traffic that Google does. Being featured in a snippet can give you access to 20% of Google’s daily search queries.
Currently, there are 4 pieces of criteria that Google’s algorithm looks at when determining if your website should appear in one of their snippets. If you can’t answer yes to all 4 items. You need to re-evaluate your content and find ways to add more value before you submit a request.
The 4 criteria:
- Quality of the source page (how good is it?)
- Authority of the source page (how much does Google trust it?)
- Relevance of the source page (Is this a good fit?)
- Relevance of the individual page Is this a good fit?)
Let’s quickly go over these items one by one. Keep in mind that there is no “magic bullet” for getting featured snippets, but following these guidelines will help increase your chances:
- Quality of the source page (how good is it?)
When Google looks at your page to see if it’s a good fit for the question being asked. It looks at metrics that are traditionally considered “quality signals”. Things like bounce rate, time on site, domain authority & trust flow from Majestic SEO, and other link metrics play a role in this. The more authoritative/trusted the source page is, the more weight it carries.
2. Authority of the source page (how much does Google trust it?)
This criteria is a bit more advanced and SEOs have come up with a number of different ways to identify authority on a page. The most common way is to look at Moz’s Domain Authority & Page Authority metrics.
3. Relevance of the source page (is this a good fit?)
This is where things get tricky. Google doesn’t want to show an answer that’s just marginally related to the question being asked. Because it wants to give its users the best possible result. So when evaluating if your page should be in a snippet or not. It looks at how close your page’s topic is to the topic/question being asked. If you write “how do I fix my car?” and you answer with “pump up your tires”, this doesn’t really fit. Pumping up tires isn’t a permanent solution that will impact the behavior of your car, so Google probably won’t show it. Also, you’re not really answering the question being asked here, so it’s of less value to their users.
4. Relevance of the individual page (is this a good fit?)
This is more of a “does your on-site SEO optimization make sense?” test for Google. It looks at things like on-page title tags, meta descriptions. And internal links to see if your content is seo optimized for the question being asked. For example, if you write an article about “how much does a dog cost?” and your page’s title tag says “Puppy Cost Guide” with an internal link to another article called “How Much Does A Puppy Cost?”, this doesn’t really pass the test.
Google’s featured snippets have been around for a while. But in recent years they have started appearing more frequently and play a bigger role in Google’s algorithm. Understanding how to optimize your content for these snippets is an important part of every SEO campaign, regardless of industry or niche.
