Rank High in Google with SEO Authority
Google is a fantastic resource for finding anything. From recipes, to information about your favorite website, or how to rescue a choking person: Google has you covered.
In terms of ranking high on Google’s SERPS (search engine results page), they have all kinds of tools and even an online community to help you improve your search engine rankings; including data such as keyword usage trends and backlinks that can be used in SEO strategies.
Hopefully this post will give you some insight into the importance of SEO Authority and how it can teach you everything there is to know about ranking high in Google’s SERPs.
How to Rank Higher in Google: SEO Basics
In general, if you want your site to rank higher in Google, it’s all about backlinks and the volume of links pointing to the site. The more links you have, the more authority you have.
To break this down into a little bit of detail and illustrate how this works on a practical level, let’s use a hypothetical SEO company as an example. We’ll call them “Optimized SEO Company.” You can find Optimized SEO Company’s link profile at Moz: http://moz.com/blog/optimized-seo-company-link-profile .
As you can see, Optimized SEO Company has a lot of backlinks (15000). But, it’s only from a handful of domains, so they aren’t very authoritative. The majority of the backlinks coming in are coming from these sites:
Here are the top five websites that are linking to Optimized SEO Company:
http://www.optimalseo.com/ https://www.clearperthq.com/ http://www.yourwebsitehelper.com/ http://www.online-link-building-services.com/ http://www.bestseowebdesignernearme.com/
You can see that a lot of the links coming from these websites are from “click through” type sites, like “yourwebsitehelper.com” and “bestseowebdesignernearme.com.”
To get a better idea of why Optimized SEO Company ranks so low in Google, let’s take a deeper dive into their link profile. Here we can look at the domains that are ranking highly for Optimized SEO Company:
https://www.webmaster-tools.org/ https://www.seo-optimization-checklist.com/ http://www.seo-websites-reviews.com/ https://www.seo-link-building.com/ http://www.serpbook.com/site/optimized-seo-company
As the first result, you can see that most of the links pointing to Optimized SEO Company are coming from domains that look like spam and are unlikely to be trusted by Google’s web crawlers.
How to Get Backlinks Like a Pro: 10 Tips for Ranking in Google’s Top Results
Optimized SEO Company has a few opportunities that they could use when trying to rank higher in Google’s SERPs:
Start getting backlinks from other authoritative websites (like Wikipedia, blog posts, industry blogs, etc.); Start getting backlinks from paid sites (like paid submission websites); Start getting backlinks from high-quality sites that are trusted by Google’s web crawler.
For example, if the most authoritative site linking to Optimized SEO Company was Wikipedia, then they would have more authority and therefore better rankings. However, Optimized SEO Company can’t just contact Wikipedia and say “Hey! We want to build up our authority and get better rankings in Google! Here are our 10 best keywords for you!” What they can do though is go to WordPress.org and buy a number of posts on WordPress.org about their services. This will give them some high-quality backlinks, and even some added authority from the SEO community as well.
How to Rank Higher in Google: Authority Backlinks vs. Keyword-Rich Backlinks
One of the most overlooked reasons for ranking lower in Google is the quality of backlinks pointing to your site. You can either get more authoritative backlinks, or you can get links that are keywords-rich (backlinks that include relevant terms).
Unless your site is ranking #1 for a keyword or phrase, there’s no reason to target backlinks that are only relevant to that keyword or phrase. You can’t win “the long game” if you have short-term results in mind.
Think about it like this: let’s say you want to get better search engine rankings so that you can improve your business (everyone always says they want to improve their SEO). The smart move is to look at the top sites already ranking high in Google, and find out what types of links are pointing to them. Then, try and replicate that strategy for your own website.
For example, Optimized SEO Company is going to want to find the following types of backlinks pointing to those high-ranking sites:
Experts linking out and referencing that domain. Customer reviews. Blogs mentioning the niche site in their posts. Press mentions from reputable news websites (or industry blogs). Wikipedia links. Social shares from Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Let’s look at a few other examples of how this should work on a more specific level:
SEO Authority: Backlink Quality vs. Volume – What Google Looks For
Here are two examples of how you can get backlinks on authority sites that Google will like.
Example 1: Getting Backlinks From Press Mentions and References on Industry Blogs (Reputable)
Let’s talk about Optimized SEO Company, Inc. Optimized SEO Company, Inc. has been getting some press lately in their industry blog. Here is their latest article: “The Best SEO Company You’ve Ever Seen; The Story of Optimized SEO Company, Inc.” Notice how the author mentions them again several times in the third paragraph? This counts as another “mention” that gives us more keywords to target for our backlink strategy.
Conclusion: Optimized SEO Company, Inc. can get backlinks from their industry blog that include the phrase “optimized SEO company” or “optimized seo company.”
Example 2: Getting Backlinks From Press Mentions and References on Wikipedia (Reputable)
OK. Let’s say your mom works as a plumber and is always looking for a really good plumber to fix her pipes.