So, this began my personal journey of exploring the hidden world of how websites actually rank naturally within Google and other search engines. When I first started thinking about building websites many years ago, I had absolutely no idea how Google worked. The year was around 2003 or 2004, and I honestly didn’t even know that normal people like you and me could create a website and have it rank on the first page of Google. Maybe I thought that only large corporations that paid to be listed there could make it. Ranking data in Google Sheets can be a powerful way to make data analysis more meaningful and actionable.
Google SEO Tools and Software
- Backlinks essentially serve as a mark of approval from one website to another.
- Our ranking systems are designed to work on the page level, using a variety of signals and systems to understand how to rank individual pages.
- Getting your app featured could increase Explore traffic to the store listing, making it highly relevant to ASO.
SEMrush is another great tool we advise you to use to track Google ranking. Here you can see your website’s average position on search results. But don’t panic—these updates aren’t meant to knock you down but to help you understand which areas of your site could be improved. If you are unsure how to use “incognito” or what it is all you need to do is to press Ctrl + Shift + N to open an incognito window if you’re using Windows. Your search results will not be affected by what you have been searching for in the past which gives you a true result.
Local link-building tips
There isn’t one single ranking factor that will make or break your SEO. It’s the combination of all your technical, on-page, and off-page efforts that work together to help you rank higher on Google, get more traffic, and build trust. Where’s the first place people go when they need an answer, idea, product, or service? And most of them don’t scroll too far past the first few results. And if you’re looking for a tool that can streamline these processes even further, consider Bricks.
I’ve been social with others in my industry; I’ve reached out by email, commented SEO Anomaly on other blogs (not for links, but to interact), joined forums, and more. This has lead to relationships – which eventually lead to links. But I have never linked to NichePursuits.com via article directories, Fiverr gigs, etc. For authority sites, I would never recommend those “manual” tactics.
The whole point of E-E-A-T is that Google values and favors creators/blogs/websites that bring real-life experience with a product, service, or concept over others that don’t. Many SEOs understand that freshness is a ranking signal, but they mistakenly believe that it only applies to the content itself. E.g. updating the publish date and refreshing the content every couple of years. This type of “natural” link building happens all the time, thousands of times a day.
Understanding and effectively using keywords is essential for improving your website’s ranking on Google. Industry experts recommend using the keyword at or close to the beginning of the title tag. That’s because Google pays more attention to what appears in the title tag first. What you can do is create a couple of pages around the central topic.
It’s a long, ongoing strategy that takes time to come to fruition. Whether it’s your meta descriptions or your image alt text, every aspect of your store plays a role in your overall running and SEO. Once you have the right tracking SEO tools in place, you want to review and tweak your store structure for maximum optimization.