Top Google rankings are a clear indicator of online business success. A study has shown that the first result in Google gets about 31.7% of all clicks while results on the second page receive just 0.78 % of clicks. A lot of business owners have shown a desire to improve Google’s ranking without being penalized.

For this reason, we have come up with this article to explain the step-by-step guide to improving Google rankings for your business without attracting a penalty. Let’s explore more.

Step #1: Familiarize yourself with the Google Algorithm

It has been confirmed that the Google algorithm constantly changes, even though they are not publicly announced. While Google used to share major update announcements, the exact inner workings of the algorithm are still undisclosed. The majority of the information is just speculation from industry professionals.

Step #2: Access Your Current Google Ranking

For you to improve your Google ranking, you need to know where you stand exactly. Thankfully, there are several tools like SEO SERP mojo, SEO Check, SE, Ranking Pro, and so on to help you out. It is also advisable that you check your site speed. This is important because if your site is slow, it will have a little chance to rank high on Google.

Step #3: Track and Measure the Right SEO Metrics

The next thing to do is track some vital metrics of your site to find out what other factors you need to improve on. For instance, analyzing organic traffic and then having an organic traffic conversion by paying attention to the keyword that generates traffic to your site. Thus, you should spend enough time focusing on the right keywords for your business niche to rank high on Google.

Step #4: Ensure Your Site is Mobile-Friendly

More than 50% of all website traffic comes from a mobile device. This means if you want to rank well, your site must be mobile-friendly. While some algorithm changes are unclear, Google left nothing to the imagination when it comes to mobile. In fact, Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning that Google looks at websites as a mobile device. If your site is hard to navigate, it may affect your ranking.

Step #5: Diagnose and Fix Your Current Google Penalties If Any

By now, you must have set up your search ranking and set up tracking for the most important metrics. Hence, the next thing to do is to examine your site in detail and fix any current penalties. There is no point in building or promoting links to an unhealthy site. Therefore, you must learn how to generate good links to your site as bad links can have a terrible effect on your site.

Step #6: Improve Google Rankings with Keyword Research

Once you have eliminated all unnatural links, the next thing is to improve on-page SEO the right way. However, one key element in building an effective inbound marketing strategy is keyword research. You won’t get far if you don’t understand how it works.

Step #7: Increase Google Ranking with On-Page SEO

Now that you have an understanding of the keywords you want to target and should be targeting, the next thing to do is devise a way of maximizing your performance. You can do this by optimizing title tags, using schema markup, or creating a sitemap. As much as possible, try your best to make sure that your title tag is descriptive, unique, and catered to your keyword. Your schema markup will then explain to Google what it means. The work of the sitemap is to tell the search engine about the organization of your site content.

Step #8: Build links the correct way

You can do this by anchor text linking, also known as, in-link texts. Make use of other types of links like scale link building, internal links, and editorial links. The anchor text linking strategy is used when you want to get ranked for a particular keyword. In fact, you can use your target keyword as anchor text, but to avoid penalties, it is advisable that you mix it up with generic keywords. When you build a natural link keyword with targeted on-page SEO, it will survive anything Google throws at it.

Wrapping Up

The key to unlocking higher Google rankings without getting slapped with a penalty boils down to being memorable and useful. Make sure you take the time to understand your target audience and know what they want exactly. Once you get all this info, you can then proceed to create convincing content to meet up their needs. Solve their problems and make them come back for more.