Today’s Ask an SEO question comes from Roy in Dinajpur:
“My website URL [is] still [in] position No. 15. How can increase to No. 3 or 4?”
Great question, and likely one of the top five that get asked. The answer is situational, and it is easier to resolve when you don’t overthink it.
The first thing to do is to look at the current pages in the top 10 positions and create a list by page of:
- What they have in common.
- Talking points and topics they cover.
- How many internal links that point to these pages.
- The number of quality and spammy backlinks each page has.
- On-page factors like HTML structure, schema, and the quality of the content.
- Content formatting and if they’re presenting the content in the most easy-to-understand and use formats.
I like to do this in spreadsheets because it lets me either assign values from one to 10 and add them up, or see what is missing and what is included across the sites more easily.
If you assign a number for each page with the aspect I’m looking for, I can add the columns and rows up to see how common it is based on the higher number.
If you only use a one (1), meaning it exists on the page, the higher the number, the more pages have it. If rating the quality of content, UX, formatting, sourcing, etc., I assign one to 10.
Once added up across or down, I can see which pages are the best and look at why. From there, I can begin working on my variation and create an even better experience.
Pro-tip: Better experiences may sometimes mean less content, removing specific sections as they may not be topically relevant, or adding in things I didn’t think of but make sense.
But don’t rely on this alone. Go deeper into the features on the pages and within the websites ranking above you, and then look at your own page.
Start To Review Your Own Content Or Page
Now, ask yourself:
- Do I have the same content or not?
- Is my content or page sharing something unique or more useful than these?
- They all have X content, but is it topically relevant to the query I want my page to show up for?
- If not, delete it so my page is more on-topic.
- If yes, add it.
- What could be better explained, or could clearer examples be used that are missing from theirs?
- Can I easily absorb the text, or would bullets, tables, videos, sound clips, images, and infographics make it better?
These are ways you can begin to create more helpful content on your page. Then, look at some of the other factors that can help. Internal links can be a good place to start.
Where on my website do I reference this topic, product, or service, and will linking to my page help the website visitor?
If these same pages have traffic and backlinks and get social shares, add the internal link. Just make sure it benefits the end user and is not just there for SEO.
Now, look to see if you have conflicting internal links (links to the different pages off of the same keywords and the same intent).
In some cases, backlinks could be a factor, especially with “Your Money of Your Life” (YMYL) and medical queries. What does your page have that the others do not, and how is it more trustworthy than theirs?
You can use this to ask the websites linking to them to include you or replace their links with your resource instead.
Another option is to begin building quality links to your resource, but avoid spammy tactics like mass emailing, guest posting, scholarships, grants, forum and blog comments, PBNs, and link exchanges.
Technical audit and on-page SEO can help you as well. Schema does not help with rankings, but it does help with rich results and lets search engines know what your page is about. Make sure yours is not deprecated and is up to date.
Check your header tags, titles, descriptions, and wording. When doing that, also ensure that your content is around the same reading level and language style as the audience you want to reach.
Look At The Overall Site
Another thing is to consider the site overall.
Having one or two quality pages is good, but what about other topics that work for the same audience and would be interesting for them to read once they finish the page they’re on? This applies to ecommerce, publishers, and everything in between.
Are you using AI and LLMs to create content? You should probably delete that content immediately if you didn’t go in and edit it to have information only a human with experience would know.
If you’re using LLMs to create content, you’re recycling the knowledge already out there versus adding something new. It is the same as scraping four or five sites and using an article spinner to produce the output.
Is there thin content that is also in the category or being recommended? Delete that, too. Same with recommended articles from third parties and ad networks.
Having a couple of good-quality pages is great, but if the person clicks on the next article and it is thin, outdated, or inaccurate, you’re providing a bad experience, and some algorithms may use sitewide classifiers.
Those thin and spammy pages that do not educate and provide solutions impact the high-quality pages.
If all else is equal between you and another site, these low-quality pages could be the deciding factor if your high-quality page makes it to page one and who stays on page two if all else is equal.
The same goes for page and site speed. Yes, they matter, but not that much unless you’re a publisher.
Do Everything Right And You Should Get There
Sometimes, you can do everything right and have the best experience, but Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, or Naver doesn’t bring you up to page one or top positions. Then you magically jump there, as do other pages during a core update.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for moving to the top five positions from page two, but by doing everything right, you should eventually make it there.
Fix the issues above and then keep working on it. Eventually, it pays off, and you’ll likely see your site and pages start hitting page one and going to top positions when you’ve fixed enough.
If you’re on page two, that means your page and your site have some quality that is trustworthy.
Now, it’s a matter of fine-tuning that experience so that it can become a page one result. The above tip should help you diagnose what could be better; once done, it’s a waiting game if your experience is already there. I hope this helps.
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Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal