How to Rank on the First Page of Google

As the saying goes, the best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google. And it's because only 0.78% of Google searchers click page 2 results. 

So this tutorial is all about higher rankings and especially getting you off that second, third, or tenth page. 

Now, before we get started, it's important to note that to rank number one on search results, your website and content should meet a certain level of quality. 

Generally speaking, your site should be mobile SEO optimized, load decently fast, have clear navigation and UX, be secure using HTTPS, be free of other glaring technical SEO issues, and your content should be well written. 

Not only are some of these direct Google ranking factors, but the process that I'm about to share with you will produce much better results if your website is up to scratch. 

Check the strength of the competition

With any battle, you need to know who you're up against. And since we want to rank on the first page of Google, your competition is obviously going to be the top 10 results. 

Now, at this stage, we just want to do a quick spot-check to see if the websites ranking for this keyword are out of our league. So let's say you have a relatively new SEO blog and you want to rank for "Local SEO." 

You'll see that the top pages are well-known brands like Moz, Search Engine Land, Wordstream, and Google. Chances are, you probably won't be able to compete anytime soon. Whereas something like "affordable seo services for small business" shows sites you probably haven't heard of. So this might be more within your wheelhouse. 

The second thing to look at is website authority. At Ahrefs, there is a metric called Domain Rating or DR. This represents the overall strength of a website's backlink profile. Now, while I don't use this as a main metric to gauge ranking difficulty, it can work well to spot check the relative "strength" of a brand from an SEO perspective. 

If you're not an Ahrefs user, you can use their free Website "Authority" Checker. 

First, enter your domain and you'll see a DR score. Mark that down. Then you can use it to check the Domain Rating for the top 10 ranking websites. 

If you have an Ahrefs account, just go to Keywords Explorer and enter your target keyword. Domain Ratings of webistes' will be quite high for the keyword "SEO". So if your DR is let's say 30, then you probably won't be able to compete. 

As for the keyword "affordable SEO services for small business," you'll see Domain Ratings ranging from 6 to 86. So for that DR 30 site, I'd say it's well within your wheelhouse. If you've chosen a keyword that's too competitive now, go back to keyword research. 

Make sure your page aligns with search intent

Search intent means the reason behind a searcher's query. For example, if you search for "how to make a website," you'll see that almost all of the ranking pages are how-to guides with step-by-step instructions. 

To determine search intent, just Google your keyword, and identify the 3 C's of search intent. The first C is content type. So are the top pages blog posts, product, category, or landing pages? For example, the type of pages ranking for "buy protein powder" are all e-commerce category pages. 

The second C is content format. And this applies mainly to when you're trying to rank informational content. Common formats include: how-to guides, step- by-step tutorials, list posts, opinion pieces, reviews and comparisons. So if we look at the top pages for "best tasting protein powder," you'll see all pages are list posts. 

And third is content angle. This one is harder to quantify than type or format, but content angle is generally the dominant unique selling proposition used by the top-ranking pages. For example, pages ranking for "best protein powder" almost all have the current year in the title, which to me says that freshness is the angle. 

Whereas the pages ranking for "blogging tips" are taking the angle of "for beginners." If you were to try and rank for "blogging tips" with an article called "17 Advanced Blogging Tips for Professional Bloggers," it might be tough to rank. 

Reason being, the better you can match the searcher's query, the better your chances of ranking high. If your page doesn't match search intent, you'll want to update the page so it does. 

But, if your page is matching intent, let's move onto the next stage, which is to ensure your content covers the topic in full. 

The way that you and I look at topics might be very different from the way Google looks at them. For example, if you and I were to talk about the best watch brands, I might talk about Apple and you might talk about Omega. 

Ask five more people, and you might get five completely different responses. Now, looking at Google's top 10 pages for this query, it's quite clear you should write a list-style blog post that focuses heavily on luxury brands. And if you visit the pages, you'll notice something interesting. They all mention Rolex. 

So this is probably a brand you should include too if you haven't already. Now, this is kind of just guessing based on observation. So if you want to take it a step further, you can also do a Content Gap analysis at the page-level. Just take a few top-ranking pages and paste them in the top section of Ahrefs' Content Gap tool and run the search. 

You will see queries that one or more of these pages are ranking for. Just sift through the keywords and you'll get a better idea of subtopics you should talk about. 

Now, if your content isn't up to date, then rewind and follow these steps. But if you've covered your topic in full, move on to the next step which is to estimate the number of backlinks you'll need and then build them. 

Backlinks are an important ranking factor. Not only has Google said it themselves, but pretty much every industry study has found a positive relationship between organic search traffic and backlinks. Now, there's no way to know an exact number of backlinks required because not all backlinks are created equal. 

Add internal links to your page

We already know that backlinks can help boost the authority of your page. But internal links can also help tremendously. To find pages you should add links from, just go to Google and search for site:yourdomain.com and then a keyword that's relevant to your page. 

You'll then see all indexed pages from your site that have that keyword somewhere on the page. Visit the pages and add internal links where relevant. Generally speaking, the more "authority" you've built to the linking pages, the more "authority" it can pass to the linked pages. 

If you follow the above-mentioned tips seriously, your page will get on the first page soon for your targeted keywords.