How to Improve Blog Ranking in Google Search

Google, the Internet giant, decides fate of blogs and websites. If it loves your blog, it can send you unlimited free traffic and if it starts hating any online presence, whole business is vanished in minutes. Beginner bloggers usually attempt unethical practices to improve the ranking of their blogs in Google and other search engines which lead to the destruction instead of any success. Spamming is one of the biggest “cancers” which destruct blogs.

If you spam other sources on the Internet, beware that Google has human reviewers and if they find you attempting any unethical practice, they will lower your blog’s ranking which may get unrecoverable in most cases. So to improve your blog’s ranking in SERPs, you need to follow some ethical ways which are recommended by almost all SEO experts. I have compiled a list of some safe approaches which will contribute to increase your blog’s ranking without putting it at danger.

Backlinks Aren’t Dead

Backlinks are the strongest indicator about any content’s popularity and Google counts them while ranking content in SERPs. To build backlinks, bloggers mostly spam other sources including forums and blogs but that’s not an ethical way. I would recommend you to earn backlinks instead of building them.

Now you may ask me how to earn backlinks? The answer is, write original and helpful content, others will find it useful and will link to it. In such a way, a natural backlink profile will be built. When bloggers contact me via email and ask me how to improve their content’s visibility in Google search, I tell them to “write helpful content“.

Promote Your Blog

An “intelligent” blogger asked me last week that how to earn backlinks in beginning if no one knows your blog and Google also doesn’t rank it? The question was really nice. In beginning, no one knows what you are writing and your blog needs promotion. To promote your blog, write a few guest posts, promote blog posts in social networks, join forums, participate commenting on other blogs, submit your blog to directories and submit PRs. This really helps in putting your content in front of the world. While doing this, always be cautious that you aren’t spamming any source. For example if you join a forum, participate the conversation there, set your blog’s URL as signature and in such a way, you will earn some quality backlinks. But do it in a limited count, as a lot of forum links with similar anchor text may invite Google to penalize you.

When it comes to build backlinks in beginning, never do it randomly. Consider the quality and relevancy of the source before getting backlinks from it. You MUST not build backlinks from low quality (spammed) or irrelevant sources.

Write Original and Helpful Content

I have seen several bloggers who copy and paste content from other blogs. Recently, I noticed a new WordPress site where the writer is copying all my posts. Google’s Matt Cutts have mentioned several times that if the copying/pasting of text reaches the limit of spam, Google will treat it with punishment by lowering the ranking.

Now if you want to see your blog at higher positions in SERPs, you must write your own content. 

Use Google Tools Properly

Google has provided webmasters with all needed tools to keep an eye over their websites and blog’s performance in Google search. Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics and Google AdWords Keyword Planner are the most powerful tools which contribute a lot in improving your content’s visibility in SERPs if you use them properly.

Be Regular in Writing

I have experienced that if you keep your blog updated regularly, it puts very good effect on SERP ranking of your blog content. Continues addition of fresh content brings Google bot again and again to your blog and content is indexed faster. Although indexing isn’t connected with SERP rankings, but it has been seen that regularly updated blogs do well than those which are left untouched for a long time.

In addition to posting fresh content, try to increase comments on your blog. The more people will participate commenting on your blog, the more fresh content will be added. Google takes it as a strong indicator of content’s popularity and thus ranking of the content improves in SERPs.

Social Media, I Hate but it Works

I hate social networks and Facebook is the most useless website of the world according to me where people spend hours for no gain. But the reality is, all social traffic is not useless and some serious visitors can be gained from social networks too. It has been proved that the more your content is shared on social networks, the higher its positions are in SERPs. Although all links from social networks are nofollow, still they are counted. It means that social sharing indicates the popularity of the content and Google takes it in account for defining SERP positions.

Do Link to Relevant Sources

A lot of outbound links aren’t recommended from your blog posts but putting no external links is also not recommended. While writing content, put at least one external backlink to any high quality source on the web which contains useful information about the topic you are writing at.

Blog Structure, Make it Easy to be Crawl

Google bots crawl over your blog and they grab the content. If its navigation is poor or the template isn’t good, then it may also lead to drop in ranking of your content in SERPs. To ensure that Google bot crawls your blog effectively and grabs all information, use an SEO friendly theme or template, build a good internal linking structure and build a clean and effective navigation.