Why is everyone always raving about search engine optimization and climbing the Google ranking ladder? In simple words, if your website shows up in the first few pages of Google, more people will discover your website.
Think of yourself as a consumer; have you ever Googled a query and gone past the first few 2-3 pages? No, right? According to research, approximately 90% of the audience never even go to the second page. Another study conducted by Moz in 2014 concluded that about 71.33% of the users only go as far as the top 10 search results, and only 3.99% go to the second page of Google.
That is why your search engine placement is important. Ultimately, your search engine optimization objective should be to be the golden egg – the very first search engine position on Google, organically.
So, what is search engine positioning exactly? In this article, we will be discussing all about it and more, so keep reading!
What is Search Engine Positioning?
It is the procedure of optimizing certain web pages to achieve higher search rankings for particular keywords. That includes continuously ensuring that your site is always in the first few rankings in your niche.
This is a crucial step for businesses, and when done right, your site can improve your search engine position, and your page can end up on the top search engine listings for the specific keyword you have optimized for.
What are Search Engine Listings?
Search engine listings refer to the unpaid listings of a webpage on a search result page.
Again, when done right, it will add to the traffic coming to your website and an increase in the Click-Through Rate (CTR).
Some marketers believe that optimization is a one-time thing – but it is not that simple. Search engine positioning is a practice that happens continuously and it keeps on adjusting to the present ranking position.
Search Engine Optimization vs. Search Engine Positioning – Is There A Difference?
Many digital marketers use the words interchangeably, but others say there are a few minor differences between the two.
Search engine positioning is focused on optimizing the site to continuously rank higher on search engines for the essential keywords related to the brand’s niche and reaching the target audience.
Meanwhile, SEO is the process of improving your site to increase its visibility through relevant keywords, meta descriptions, meta tags, and backlinks. Whichever term you prefer, both improve organic traffic to your website.
What Are The Benefits Of Search Engine Positioning?
This method is essential for businesses that want to improve their search engine placement as search engine positioning directly impacts the traffic coming to your website. If proper techniques are used, your website will achieve a higher search engine position.
With planned moves and effective strategies, your website will benefit in the following ways:
1.Increased organic visibility
The first and the most significant advantage of search engine positioning is that it makes sure that your page is showing up on the first page of the commonly used search engines organically.
Most of the time, users tend to click on the first few results that appear higher on Google and other search engines. A good positioning strategy will improve your organic visibility and drive more traffic to it.
When the traffic increases, it will lead to a rise in sales, leads, and engagement.
2.More revenue in the long run
A good search engine positioning strategy is an investment for the long run. To improve your search engine placement, you will be required to invest initially, but, if done right, the revenue will increase significantly.
3.Beat the Competition
No matter which niche you belong to, you will have competitors. The competition is continuously increasing, and that is why you need to stay ahead of the game.
A good positioning strategy will ensure that your target audience views your website first when they are looking for a particular product or service and not your competitors’.
What Search Engine Rankings Tell You
A meme, very popular in the SEO community, says, “The best place to hide a dead body is Google’s Page 2.” Perhaps the saying wouldn’t be so hilarious if it wasn’t so true.
It has been reported that Page 1 of Google captures approximately 92% of all the traffic.
You know you are truly desperate for an answer when you find yourself checking the second page. The following steps are essential if you want to improve your search engine rankings:
- Checking your search engine ranking reports to see your keyword-by-keyword rankings.
- Monitoring any sudden changes; this is an essential step as it helps you figure out if a sudden change occurred due to a change in Google’s algorithm or if there’s an issue with your website.
What Do Search Engine Ranking Reports Do?
Only with the right SEO tool can you benefit most from it. Having a good ranking reports tool is therefore essential. Search engine ranking reports provide you with a view of the searches and your ranking on them. The search results are free of any bias; this is essential as many search engines, such as Google, sort the results according to what customers have previously searched, or sort the results location-wise. This is why manually checking the results may provide you with a false ranking.
With a search engine ranking report, you can get the following information:
- Your website’s unbiased rankings across search engines.
- The keywords your webpage is ranking for.
- Rankings’ fluctuation over time.
- Rankings across the world.
- Competitors’ rankings for the exact keywords, and much more.
However, it will not tell if you are doing the following:
- Using the right keywords
- If you are driving traffic in
- If you are getting conversions
- If you are making revenue from positioning and SEO
Find Your Ranking With These Amazing Google Position Check Tools
With excellent Google position check tools, you can check your ranking easily – that is why we have compiled a list of our favorite tools.
Keep reading to find out how you can monitor search engine rankings.
1.Google Search Console
Cost: Free
If you want to check your Google keyword ranking, Google Search Console is where you need to be!
It is a fantastic tool for all the ecommerce store owners as it will provide you with a ton of information. Whether you have a query regarding keywords-driven clicks or engagements and impressions – go on Google Search Console right away!
Want to know your keyword rankings with Google Search Console? Follow these steps:
Step 1: Sign into “Google Search Console.”
Step 2: Type in https://www.google.com.
Step 3: Enter the keyword and click enter/the search button.
Step 4: In the “Search performance for this query” box, you will see the results, including impressions, number of clicks, and average position. You can also compare your site’s performance to a previous period.
The data that you get on Google Search Console is utterly reliable as the information comes directly from Google.
2.Ahrefs
Cost: $99 to $999
Who hasn’t heard about Ahrefs? It is an SEO tool that will provide you with accurate and reliable search rankings.
The only downfall is that Ahrefs isn’t a free tool. However, it is worth the price as it helps you to perform several activities with multiple SEO tools, including
Website audit.
Discovering relevant keywords.
Targeting competitors’ links.
It is extremely easy to use; simply follow these steps:
Step 1: Sign in to Ahrefs.
Step 2: Select “Rank Track.”
Step 3: Click “+Add New” to add your site.
Step 4: Pick your page from the “Rank Tracker” menu.
Step 5: Select “Add Keywords.”
As soon as you add your keywords, you can monitor search engine rankings to see how your website is performing.
3. SEMrush
Want to do more than just search engine positioning? Use SEMrush!
It is a paid Google Keyword tool that offers a variety of features. It not only allows you to check your search engine position but also enables you to research relevant keywords, optimize backlinks, check algorithm updates, and so much more.
One of the most fantastic things about SEMrush is that it allows you to go beyond SEO by offering tools for paid social media marketing, advertising, and more.
Here is how you can use SEMrush:
Step 1: Sign in to SEMrush.
Step 2: Choose “SEO Toolkit.”
Step 3: Select “Position Tracking.”
Once you complete the above steps, SEMrush will provide you with some crucial information, including
- Best-performing keywords
- Top competitors in search rankings
- Overall visibility
- Estimated audience traffic
- Landing pages
You will find all the information on SEMrush’s main dashboard. You can also click on different tabs to view the data one by one. You can also export all the information and share it with your team.
It is one of the best tools for a business. The only downfall is that it comes at a hefty price due to its expansive features.
4.AccuRanker
Cost: Free
Want to improve your Google ranking placement by finding your keyword ranking? If yes, then you need to use AccuRanker.
AccuRanker will provide you with a preview of search engine results. You can customize the results according to your location and country. You can even check how the results will come across on desktop or mobile devices.
To use the tool, follow these steps:
Step 1: Go to www.accuranker.com.
Step 2: Click on “Free Tools.”
Step 3: Select “SERP Checker.”
Step 4: Enter your keywords.
Step 5: Choose your country.
Step 6: Pick your location (optional).
Step 7: Select your device (optional).
Step 8: Select “Search Now.”
Remember that you can only view the first page of the results with SERP Checker. Another drawback of AccuRanker is that it limits the audience to five searches per day.
If you have several keywords, then the free version of AccuRanker might not be for you.
If you want to monitor your brand’s position, try investing in their paid version.
Free Tools:
Some of the free tools that you can use for your brand are
- Small SEO Tools
- OpenSERPS
- SEO SERP Mojo
- Serprobot
Paid Tools:
And, some of the paid Google Position Check tools that you can use are
- Moz
- Sistrix
- SEOBOX
- Serposcope
- Pro Rank Tracker
How Can I Improve My Search Engine Positioning?
Ensuring that your website ranks higher and stays on the first few pages is a continuous process that takes time. Google’s algorithm changes every few days and keeping up with it is part of the equation. Here are a few tips and tricks to improve your search engine positioning!
1) Pre-planning & Keywords
To rank higher on search engines, your content needs to be extremely well-written, and pre-planning it helps to keep up! Make it a practice to do the following steps to better manage your website and ranking!
Maintain a Content Calendar
A content calendar is an amazing resource to pre-plan posts. You can create it on Google Slides, Google Docs, or Google Sheets but make sure you stick to it.
Pick the Right Keywords:
Positioning truly depends on using the relevant keywords. This includes taking your time out to do some keyword research and keeping a close eye on whether the popularity of the keyword is declining or increasing.
Frequently Check Google Rankings:
Check who is currently showing up on Google when you search for a specific keyword. You are in luck if you see a lot of Pinterest posts or other social media links. With proper techniques, you can easily snag their position!
However, if you see the names of big competitors, it is better to incorporate keywords that aren’t as competitive.
2) Updating your Meta Descriptions and Tags with Targeted Keywords
We know you have probably heard this several times. The truth is, there are still a bazillion small and medium enterprises that are struggling to get organic results just because they’re not giving attention to their meta descriptions and tags.
This applies especially to smaller brands who sell their products on ecommerce platforms such as Amazon, eBay, and Shopify.
If you don’t know what meta descriptions and tags are, they are basically what a customer sees on the search engine page along with other results.
That is why you need to make sure that your descriptions are interesting enough to grab their attention and contain all the relevant information; otherwise, they will skip your product for another.
3) Keeping an Eye on Your Website Speed
There is more to search engine positioning than just keywords! The thing is, if users come to your website, they do not want to wait several minutes for your site to load. Users have various other options to buy a product and can easily switch to another brand.
Google has been emphasizing a lot on website loading speed and says that it is one of the factors that its algorithm uses to rank pages.
There are multiple tools online that you can use to evaluate your website’s speed, one of the most used ones being Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
4) Giving a New Life to Existing Content
Do you have high-quality content from years ago on your website that did not get enough traffic?
One of the most significant advantages of digital marketing is that everything is editable – you can easily re-optimize the content that already exists and get better traffic for it.
Here are a few things that you can do to re-optimize existing content:
- Include new (and relevant) keywords.
- Add more details to the posts.
- Change it up a little according to modern standards.
5) Using Internal Linking:
Have an article that did really well in the past? Chances are that people will still be interested in reading that blog. One of the things you can do is create content and include internal links to your previous but relevant work.
For example, if you are writing an article about the best body lotions for dehydrated skin, you can mention in your blog post that there is a difference between dry and dehydrated skin and link a webpage that talks about the difference between the two. This is called internal linking.
Through this technique, users won’t have to go back to the search engine to Google, “What is the difference between dry and dehydrated skin?” They will get the information right from your article.
6) Steering Clear of Keyword Cannibalization
One of the biggest mistakes many people make is that they try to include a particular keyword everywhere on the page. What happens with this is that the same keyword is repeated again and again on every single page.
It is important to repeat certain phrases throughout the website; however, you also need to mix it up wherever possible! Ensure that you have a primary keyword and some secondary keywords for each page; otherwise, your pages will have to fight against each other to get a higher ranking on Google.
Take Away
Search engine positioning is the practice of optimizing certain web pages to achieve a higher search ranking for specific keywords. It is vital for brands, blogs, or ecommerce stores as it directly affects the traffic coming to your website.
If you strategize and plan ahead, the number of people visiting your web pages will increase, which will lead to more conversion. The takeaway is that search engine positioning is essential for any online business and this guide has equipped you with all the tools you need to rank higher!