Starting a new website can get a bit frustrating at times. You spend lots of time creating articles, and when you go and search the internet to find them, you find that they are on page 9 or 10 in Google. How to get ranked in Google without paying for it might seem impossible to even happen.
Don’t let the frustration of not seeing rankings within the search engines discourage you and lead to you giving up your dream of creating a successful website. I am going to provide you with some tips to help you get ranked in Google, Yahoo and Bing.
For you to cash in on your website, it is important to be on the first page in the search engines. The first page of searches will receive 95% of all web traffic, while all the other pages only receive 5% of the search traffic.
Create Quality Content
For your articles to get ranked in the search engines where your website will start receiving organic traffic doesn’t just happen by chance. You are going to need to create quality content that is going to help your readers solve whatever problem that they are trying to solve. Make sure you are answering the questions that would lead them to your article.
Quality content should have proper grammar and sentence structure along with no misspelled words. You should aim for your articles to be between 1000 words and 1500 words at a minimum. There has been some recent changes with Google that is supporting articles that are even longer at 2000 words or more. Remember that longer articles will also have more keywords that it could rank for.
Don’t think popping out a short article of 300 to 500 words will get your article ranked on the first page. Short articles have a much harder chance of getting ranked in the search engines.
Create New Articles Consistently
You are going to find it hard for the search engines to take you serious with your website if you create an article and then don’t create another one for 6 weeks and then your next article is 8 weeks later.
Creating consistent new articles doesn’t have to mean that you are publishing a new article every day, but I recommend establish some type of goal of how many articles you will publish each week. It could be 1 article a week, 3 articles a week or even 5 articles a week, but be consistent. That will allow the search engines to see a pattern of when you will be publishing new articles, and when you start having a following of readers, they will also know when to expect something new from you.
Keep Creating New Articles
The more articles you publish to your website, the more trust the search engines will have with you that you are an authority of your niche. When you have 10 articles that are published, don’t expect that the search engines will have much trust in your website. Websites come and go all the time, and until you start publishing many articles, the search engines aren’t going to place much trust in your website.
As a general rule, you can figure your trust level going up with the search engines by 10% for every 10 articles you publish. That would mean that once you have published 100 articles the search engines will have 100% trust that your website is an authority and that your website is always providing new articles at a consistent rate.
When starting out, it can seem like getting to 100 articles is an impossible feat, (I know, I have felt that same impossible mountain to climb) but it gets easier and easier the longer you work at it. The amount of time it will take you to create new articles will get shorter and more ideas will come to mind, helping you to produce more.
Limit The Amount Of Affiliate Links
Most likely you are creating a website to earn money, so it is easy to get in the trap of placing affiliate links all over your articles so you have the best chance to get someone to purchase something from you.
By placing too many affiliate links within your articles, you can actually have a negative impact on your earnings. You will be negatively impacting not only your rankings but also your readers.
If the search engines see nothing but affiliate links in your articles, they are going to rank you lower because it will look more like spam to them. That means you will receive less traffic to your website. Readers that see too many affiliate links will also think that your article is spam, and will quickly leave your website without reading through your article. That will snowball into the search engines ranking you even lower, since your readers are quickly leaving your site and not providing them with the information that they were looking for.
I would recommend that you place no more than 1 affiliate link for every 500 words that you write. This is a general guideline, but one that will not affect how the search engines view your site.
Know What Your Competition Is Doing
Do a search to find out who else is writing about the same stuff as you. Read their articles, check out their images and than do better than what they are doing. (Don’t copy their stuff.) Write a longer article, include more engaging images and answer the questions your readers are searching better than they do. Once you establish trust with the search engines, this will help you rank better than your competition.
Use Internal And External Links
When you are writing your articles, include one external link other than affiliate links. This would be a link to an authority website like Wikipedia if they have something relevant to what you are discussing. This would be a website that you are generally competiting with and Google will reward you for the external links.
As your website becomes more built up, many of your articles should have related topics that are being discussed. You should use at least 2 internal links that will take readers to other articles that you have written. (Make sure the topic is related to what you are discussing.) This will help with Google rankings as well. It helps them better understand the structure of your website.
Share On Social Media
The best way for a new website to start getting some traffic is sharing on social media. Not only can this help you get some early sales before Google is ranking your site, but the traffic that you get from the social media will eventually help with the search engine rankings as well.
There are so many different social media platforms, so I would recommend when starting out just to choose 2 or 3 that you are fairly comfortable using. It takes a lot of time to share on social media, and you should be spending the majority of your time creating your website and creating more content.
For me personally, Pinterest has worked the best for gaining traffic to my website, and my first sales that I ever had, came from someone on Pinterest.
Use The Best Keywords
Keywords are the words and phrases that Google, Yahoo and Bing are going to use to help them decide what your article is about. They are also going to be the words and phrases that your readers are going to be using when they search the internet.
You want to look for keywords that are actually being searched for, but at the same time, you don’t want keywords that have large competition, since it will be hard to beat out so many articles when you are first starting out. If you struggle with finding the best keywords for your niche, take a look at this article to help make it easier.
If you don’t have a keyword search tool, you need to get one. It will help you speed up the process for finding the best keywords, and it will help you find keywords that you have a better chance of getting your website ranked.
I have been using Jaaxy Keyword Search Tool since the very start of my first website. It helps provide me with how many people are searching for certain phrases, it gives me other ideas on what to use, and I know what my competition is for the keywords that I want to use.
Jaaxy will let you search for 30 keyword phrases for free, so you can see how it works and the value of their service. It is a free keyword search tool that you can use before you have to sign up or spend any money. It was developed by 2 successful marketing affiliates, so they know what you need to succeed. Give it a try now below.
Check Your Site Speed
A major ranking factor for Google is your site speed. If you website takes too long to download, many of your readers will leave before your page is even loaded. Google also will lower your rankings if your site takes too long to load. If you have slow site speed, you have little chance of ranking high within the search engines.
I recommend the following for checking your site speed. Both of them are free to use.
You also need to make sure that your website is mobile friendly. Over 60% of all searches are done with a mobile device. Google could rank your website on page 1 for a desktop, but the same search on a mobile device might not find your website at all if the mobile speed is too slow.
I use a plugin called WPtouch Mobile Plugin which can really speed up your mobile speed.
Test your website speed for both desktops and mobiles to make sure the speed isn’t harming your rankings.
Summary
Google uses algorithm to measure, test and determine the exact placement of your website. While the exact workings of their algorithm is a mystery, many of the things I have discussed above are all pieces of the pie that Google uses when deciding where websites get ranked. Things are always changing within Google’s algorithm and it is believed that there are over 500 changes per year that happen to help Google stay on top as a major search engine.
Starting a new website can have it challenges, but it is something that is obtainable. How to get ranked in Google, Yahoo and Bing will come with time, but if you follow my recommendations, it will make the entire process happen easier. If you are a beginner, you might want to read blog basics for beginners for additional suggestions.
Everything that I am talking about in this article, are all things that I learned after I started my first website. It was training that I received from a free program that Wealthy Affiliate provides on training for how to get a website running, how to have better success with your website and just general information about building a website. If you think you could benefit from additional training, take a look at what the Wealthy Affiliate Program is. Without their training, I never would have 2 websites that are making money. You can sign up for free below.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below and I will get back to you. You can follow momsmakingmoneyathome.com on Pinterest, Twitter, FaceBook or Linkedin for all the latest updates. Please use the share icons to share this article with others.
Some of the links within this post are affiliate links of which I might receive a small compensation from sales of certain items.
Those are some solid tips for those who want to rank on higher Google’s positions.
I still have trouble ranking high enough for my desired keywords mostly because I come against big authority websites. I have written longer content, included images, videos, internal and external links, but still, nothing.
Sometimes, whatever you do, if you compete against giants, it will be very hard to win.
Any suggestions?
I would suggest making your keywords longtailed keywords. This might lower the amount of traffic you are getting, but it will find readers that are actually interested in exactly what you are talking about.
I also recommend doing reviews of products. When I want to discuss a certain product, I find that the first 2 pages on the search engines is suppliers of the product. It is hard to compete with them, but doing a review of the product is much easier to rank with and the people searching for the review are usually ready to purchase the product.
You are not joking when you say that getting traffic to a new website can be frustrating at times.
I need to go back and look at my articles and make sure that I am answering the question that led the reader to my website in the first place.
You’ve made an excellent point about needing to continue to publish more articles. I must admit that after writing and publishing each article that I do, I feel like I created a master piece that people would flock to. Yet when they don’t, it is discouraging. So, I appreciate your reminder that it takes time and lots of content to build up trust with Google and the other search engines. I think I am doing a fair job with the other things you mentioned, so I expect the lack of content is probably my biggest problem for now.
Thanks for sharing these insights in what we need to be doing to get more traffic to our website without having to pay for it.
I can’t tell you how many times I have created a new article that I have thought it was the very best I have ever done and that for sure it was going to rank and get me the traffic I was dreaming of. Than I wait and nothing happens.
You need to just keep creating more content. You will be surprised when you finally see people finding your articles from organic searches that before were never to be found. As you grow your website, the lower ranking articles will keep moving up in the rankings. It will happen.
Good luck to you, and don’t be afraid and go back to older articles and make some changes. I have always seen an increase in my rankings after I have made some minor changes.