When you search for something online, hundreds of pages fight to appear in the first page of search results. How do they outperform one another? With the help of Search Engine Positioning.
Since SEO and search engines evolve rapidly, you always need to be on the lookout for new stategies, techniques and ways in which you can improve your content to surpass the competition.
And that’s where search engine positioning comes in. It’s a subset of SEO and a must have strategy in order for you to rank higher.
In this post, I’ll cover it’s main benefits and 7 proven techniques you can use to boost your positioning efforts.
Let’s start with….
What is Search Engine Positioning?
Search Engine Positioning is the process of constantly monitoring and optimizing web pages so they rank higher in search engine results.
Search engines prioritize serving the most relevant content to the user.
So the closer your content aligns with their needs the better. It still needs to be easy to navigate and have a clean interface of course.
Some ways in which you can optimize and make your content align with your audience is with:
- Relevant and Unique Content: Easy to read, informative, with unique perspectives on a topic.
- Page Speed: The faster a page loads the quicker the user can access the contents. Meaning they are less likely to bounce off.
- Mobile Optimization: Crucial for SEO nowadays. Make sure each page fits every phone size perfectly and is easy to interact with.
These are the basic criteria if you’re looking to optimize a page for your users.
Now, you might be wondering, “Is optimizing my pages really that important?”
Well I’m glad you asked…
Is Search Engine Positioning Important?
The short answer is YES.
The long answer…
Search engine positioning is VITAL if you want to improve your rankings. SEO is a constant battle after all.
You could publish the best and most informative content written by experts, but if it doesn’t rank then who will read it?
There are even studies made by Backlinko to back up the fact that the top 3 pages get the majority of clicks:
(Source Backlinko)
But that is slowly changing since google and other search engines increasingly prioritize featured snippets. Which can also appear in position ”zero”.
Essentially, the top spots aren’t just pages anymore.
That’s why search engine positioning is so imperative, since it increases your chances of earning a featured snippet spot.
7 Proven Practises for Improving your Rankings
Step 1: Continiously Optimize your Content
The name of the game in search engine positioning is Constant Optimization.
Always be on the lookout for any new practises you can use to optimize your recent and already existing content.
For starters, google prefers to serve content that’s new and fresh to it’s users, so updating your existing content once in a while is a good practise.
Especially if that piece of content you are updating is already in the top spots.
Check if it’s lacking in any aspects, perhaps keyword density is too low or the UX might need a little improvement.
Good way to give it a little boost so it can reach even higher spots.
For any new content you want to publish, always take into consideration the new updates for the algorithms that the search engines are pushing out.
As I mentioned earlier, SEO changes rapidly, so it’s important to stay informed on best practises for optimizing your new content.
For example, search engines are showing more featured snippets over time, so it’s worth exploring how to rank for them.
Step 2: Focus on Search Intent
As good as your content might be, if it doesn’t align with your user’s search intent, then it won’t get any attention or clicks, and as a result, it won’t rank high in search results.
Think about this for a second:
You made the perfect article on “fast chocolate cake recipe”. It includes 10 steps for making a cake at home with some advanced kitchen equipment.
A user searching for that term might want to find an ever faster cake recipe with only 5 steps. Plus, they might not even have advanced equipment at home.
If your content doesn’t satisfy user intent then the user will click off your article to find an even better one.
That’s where you lose your rankings.
Hence why it’s of most importance to always optimize your content for user intent. This will help you get more clicks and increase dwell time, conclusively boosting your rankings.
Step 3: Rank for Featured Snippets
The new trend for ranking high in search engine results is utilizing Featured Snippets.
There are many ways to optimize for featured snippets and it all depends on the snippet you are targeting.
Some snippets include:
- Definition Box
- “People also ask” questions
- Video Content
- Expandable FAQ snippet
As you can see in the example below, for this specific term, a definition box appears in position ”zero” followed by a “People also ask” snippet:
Some good practises to optimize for such snippets are:
- Target “what is” queries
- Put the answer in the top of the page (for definition boxes)
- Make it short, around 40-60 words long.
- Place the query you are targeting in a heading above the answer.
Step 4: Internal Linking
After optimizing your pages, the next step is to link them together internally.
Internal Linking is generally one of the most basic search engine positioning practises, but it doesn’t make it any less important.
It’s usually seen as beneficial since you transfer authority and traffic from top pages into smaller ones that could use a boost.
To find such high authority pages, you can use tools like Page Authority Checker from SmallSEOTools:
It’s also important to use anchor texts with relevant keywords in your internal links.
This approach signals to both search engines and users, that your page is based around your target keyword.
Think about this for a second:
If you are a shoe brand and you decide to write a post about the “best shoes”, you can link internally to your shoes using this method.
So not only do you bring traffic and authority to your money pages (in that case, the best sellers) but also increase the likelyhood of ranking higher for that query.
Step 5: Optimize Meta Tags
Meta Tags are the first ”line of defense” since that’s what the user sees before they even click on your website.
Ensure they’re optimized for CTR and user intent by crafting a compelling title and a persuasive description.
Furthermore, produce keyword-rich titles, and make sure to write your meta description yourself. Do not leave it up to google.
Additionally, keep the title between 60-70 characters and the meta description between 150-160.
Step 6: Monitor Core Web Vitals
Maintaining good Core Web Vitals is decisive for reaching the top google spots.
The core web vitals of your website, can be seen in a usage data report that shows you how your pages perform.
You can view such a report in Google Search Console:
This gives you an idea of how people interact with your website.
It’s imperative that you retain a good user experience throughout your entire website.
For example, if a page loads poorly then users might bounce off your website entirely.
Which in extent hurts your rankings. Since the longer someone stays in your website, the better google thinks it suits them.
And how can you improve your Core Web Vitals?
Well a good start would be…
Step 7: Reduce Image Load
Lastly, by Reducing Image Load, you can greatly improve your Core Web Vitals.
A good practise for all images, is to keep them below 100kb and to also make them in .webp format, since that way the images get compressed without losing their quality.
Let me also give you another real life example on why reducing image load can vastly improve the user experience and your rankings.
LCP (largest containtful paint) measures the time it takes for the largest piece of content to load.
Now imagine that the largest piece of content in your home page or perhaps another landing page, is a hero image.
If that image isn’t properly compressed then the time it will take for the page to load will significantly increase.
Which in return, you guessed it, possibly makes people bounce off your website.
Therefore, it’s important to make a habit of properly compressing large images before adding them to your website.
Concluding….
Υou reached the end of the Search Engine Positioning practises you can use to improve your rankings!
I hope this post convinced you how important continious monitoring and optimization are for SEO and for achieving higher rankings in search results.
Be sure to apply these practices consistently, and I’m confident you’ll see improvements both in the long term and short term!