TIPS TO INCREASE THE RATINGS OF A WEBSITE

The world will always remember Usain Bolt and Muhammad Ali because they always strived to be at the top when they played. Website rating it is human nature to be at the top of everything, whether we talk about the class or a sports competition. However, one must understand that they cannot reach the top in the lap of luxury; it requires work and sacrifice. The same goes for publishers and many companies, everyone wants to beat their competition by becoming easily accessible to the people. Previously, we only had newspapers, and the easiest way to evaluate them was looking for the top seller or who sold the most copies. Ever since the internet came by, people now do not have to set up a printing press to have their ideas heard. You need a computer or a laptop, and a working internet to reach an audience out there. Many companies that previously relied on the newspaper for their advertisement, now leverage the internet. Instead of selling copies, now we worry about how many clicks a weblink received and its position in a search result.

Since everything became much more manageable, it accompanied a colossal competition and not only locally but internationally too. Yeah, you can easily have your audience without spending much, but now you have the world to beat. Search engines have been helping people reach the relevant content, but it also has criteria for what appears first. With it came out the idea of search engine optimization, which helps people get that sweet Position Zero spot in the search results. Naturally, a question arises, what is position zero? Whenever you search something on Google, one result appears at the top with more information than the rest. As a practice, you can search “Who is the CEO of Apple?”, and you will see a small snippet from the Wikipedia page of Tim Cook. Now, another question arises for those who own websites, how to achieve position zero, since that is what everyone wants. Well, you need to improve the rating or ranking that search engines give your webpages, and we will tell you exactly how, so keep reading.

Understand the opportunity

Not all markets are the same, and achieving snippets might be easy for one but quite tricky for the other. Some businesses are less likely to get their time in the spotlight compared to different niches. For instance, local businesses will find it hard because that is how the search engines work. On the flip side, if your website belongs to a niche that provides clear answers to the FAQs in the search, you have a shot. Your niche must have some jargon that needs an explanation, and it must be easier for the search engine to display your results in a tabular form. Niches such as financial, management, health, and DIY are some of the examples of those who can easily make it to the position zero. You must also remember that it is not necessary that if your site achieves position zero today, you will necessarily have it tomorrow too. The best way to start is by reviewing the featured snippet of your competitor and search their webpage for the keywords and other elements that contribute to the SEO. People use many online tools as a study finds, for making an analysis of a snippet page for these elements that might help you.

Finding the keywords

After the baseline analysis of the good keywords, now you find out better ways to use them. You can use the old school method of keyword research that has some basic benchmarks to keep in mind. The search engines classify keywords mainly into two categories, high volume, and low volume. The former are those keywords that the people search more often, so going for them gives you a higher opportunity for landing a snippet. Search engines also prefer long queries such as the “how-to” questions having six or more words for their snippets. Well, “How” was just one example; you can also target many other types of questions such as “What”, “Why”, “Where” or “Does”. Even if you do not land a snippet, you can also land a position in the “people also ask” category that appears below the position zero with such commonly asked questions. Many online tools leverage data mining to find out the most frequently asked questions that Google adds to the snippets. Get a keyword, turn it into an extended question, and you can easily find Google snippet for the most unusual questions too.

Finding out the keywords and questions is just the beginning; the real work of how you present your webpage begins now. Whether you are building from scratch or improving the existing pages, you must keep a few ground rules in mind.

Publish relevant content

The biggest driver for the top position in a search engine is the quality content. The more relevant your content is, the bigger the chances of you landing the position zero spot. You can start by asking many questions from yourself. Do you update your site regularly to stay relevant? Do you provide all the necessary information? Does the visitor stay once they arrive or just quickly move on?

Quality Metadata

Metadata consists of three of the most critical elements of a webpage that helps the search engine in the ranking. These are the title, the URL, and the description. Though many online plugins and tools help you automatically generate the metadata, you have to be smarter than that. Align the metadata with the keyword research, and your chances of achieving the position zero will increase manifolds.

Make your website mobile-friendly

According to a report, almost 60% of the web traffic originates from a mobile device, so you must ensure that your site provides a good user experience to mobile devices. The search engines also prefer a mobile-friendly website for the position zero snippets, that is how essential it is.

Utilize links and tags

When content appears on your website, you must also include internal links that lead to other parts of your website. It keeps the user engaged and help you improve your search engine ranking. Also, you must keep in mind the keywords you use for the links, just putting a link behind “Click Here” helps nobody. You must create backlinks for the keywords that will help your search engine rating. Describe your media with tags and description as the search engine also looks for such elements in the pages. Again, the tags and descriptions must also possess the quality keywords that will land you on search results.

Key takeaways

Everyone dreams about getting the top position, but only a few manage to achieve it. Such an achievement requires an immense amount of work to stand out among the rest. In search engine optimization too, people employ intelligent techniques to help their webpage get that coveted top position in the search results. Position zero, as they call it, depends on many factors such as keyword selection, content, metadata, links and tags. With the right strategy, achieving a position as the highlighted snippet of a search result is not a far-fetched idea.